Week 6: Distribution of Sleep Quality questionnaire, progress in research paper

Welcome to the seventh post for this project. In the previous post, I delved into an explanation of my progress in the research paper, as well as an insight into my methodology. In this post I will discuss the further progress I have made in writing my paper as well as the progress I have made in the methodology. 

In the previous post, I discussed my progress in the literature review section of the paper. The literature review section is divided into the following three subsections: sleep quality, light pollution, and the connection between sleep quality and light pollution. I have written sufficient explanations of relevant topics under each subsection and have also cited sources, but I am still working on my written analysis of these sources. However, so far, a basic structure with fundamental content for the literature review section is complete. 

I have also begun working on the methodology section this week. In the methodology section, I am covering the steps I have taken to collect and analyze reported sleep quality scores from a sample of subjects that come from varying levels of light pollution. In the previous post, I discussed how I emailed a professor in regards to permission to use the Sleep Quality Scale, a developed and tested sleep questionnaire that assesses sleep quality, for my project. However, due to a lack of response, I have resorted to my own developed sleep scale. This sleep scale consists of 21 questions related to sleep quality, and the questions are categorized under the following: sleep duration, restoration after sleep, sleep efficiency, sleep regularity, sleep environment, and lifestyle. Based on the answers to the 21 questions, a numerical score representing sleep quality is created for the subject.

In addition to the 21 questions in the questionnaire, I also ask for the subject’s zip code so that I can obtain the light pollution index of the general location in which they reside. I do not ask for the subject’s name or other identifying information except for their email address, which I use to email their sleep quality score to. I have currently sent the questionnaire to 11 subjects, and I plan to have sent it out to around 15 more subjects next week.  

In order to obtain the light pollution index of a subject’s general location, I resort to using publicly available data from NASA VIIRS which is viewable on the website lightpollutionmap.info, the most recent data being from December 2023. I have looked for subjects who come from areas of both high and low indexes of light pollution in order to get more varied data.

As I continue to collect data (sleep quality scores from subjects) this week and next week, I will be recording them and looking for any noticeable discrepancies between the data reported from the subjects living in areas of noticeably different indexes of light pollution. Such a trend would suggest that there is in fact a correlation between light pollution and sleep quality. I will continue to polish my literature review section and write my methodology section. Thank you for reading this post, and I look forward to keeping you updated on my progress.