On the influence of the day of the week on objective and self-rated sleep quality of adults

Background and objective The extent to which adult sleep varies depending on the day of the week has not yet been systematically investigated with electroencephalography (EEG) data. Whether such effects exist and whether they are related to age, gender, and employment status was retrospectively analyzed based on data from an experimental double-blind cross-over study in which effects of electromagnetic fields of a cell phone base station on the sleep of a general rural population had been examined. Methods The sleep of 397 adults (age 45.0 ± 14.2 years, range 18–81 years; 50.9% women) from ten different rural German villages was recorded for 12 nights with ambulatory devices. Self-reported sleep quality was recorded in morning and evening protocols. Friedman tests were used for statistical analysis of the comparison between the days, and the Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests were used for pairwise comparisons of independent parameters between groups. Results For the present analysis, data from 335 participants were considered. Overall, the differences between nights were small and the quality of sleep was good. Three of the five objective and all six self-rated sleep parameters differed significantly between the days of the week. While the objective and the self-estimated total sleep time were longest on Sunday nights, the qualitatively poorest values occurred on Monday nights. People who worked fulltime had the longest sleep latencies on Sunday nights. Friday nights were rated the best. Conclusion The objective and self-rated sleep quality varied relatively little in a rural adult population over the course of the week, being worst on Monday nights and best on Friday nights.