There is more to the matter: For one thing, the researchers found, short daytime naps do help productivity and well-being. For another thing, participants tended to sleep at night in difficult circumstances, with many interruptions. The findings leave open the possibility that helping people sleep more soundly, rather than just adding to their total amount of low-grade sleep, could be useful.
“People’s sleep quality is so low in these circumstances in Chennai that adding sleep of poor quality may not have the benefits that another half hour of sleep would have if it’s of higher quality,” Schilbach suggests.
Sleeping on rickshaws - Schilbach, a development economist, says the genesis of the study came from other research he and his colleagues have done in settings such as Chennai — during which they have observed that low-income people tend to have difficulty sleeping circumstances in addition to their other daily challenges.
“Often, there are four or five people sleeping in the same room where it’s loud and noisy, you see people sleep in between road segments next to a highway. It’s incredibly hot even at night, and there are lots of mosquitos. Essentially, in Chennai, you can find any potential irritant or adverse sleep factor.” To conduct the study, the researchers equipped Chennai residents with actigraphs, wristwatch-like devices that infer sleep states from body movements, which allowed the team to study people in their homes. Many other sleep studies observe people in lab environments.
The study examined 452 people over a month. Some people were given encouragement and tips for better sleep; others received financial incentives to sleep more. Some members of both those groups also took daytime naps, to see what effect that had. Overall, the Chennai study’s participants had been averaging about 5.5 hours of sleep per night before the intervention and added 27 minutes of sleep per night on average. However, in order to gain those 27 minutes, the participants were in bed an extra 38 minutes per night.
“They have extremely few periods experiencing what’s thought to be the restorative benefits of deep sleep. People’s sleep quantity went up due to the interventions, because they spent more time in bed, but their sleep quality was unchanged.” That could be why, across a wide range of metrics, people in the study experienced no positive changes after sleeping more.
On the other hand, study participants who were allowed to nap while on the data-entry job did fare better in several measured categories. “These two interventions have different effects.”
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