Background
: It is generally accepted in Korea that most of the third year high school(H3) students who are under the academic competitive pressure for college enterance examination seem to be forced to restrict their daily amount of sleep in order to have more time for studying. It is well known that sleep and anxiety interact in a complex manner. The aim of this study is to determine if the trait anxiety could affect sleep patterns in H3 students This article is part of a broad survey study concerning sleep patterns in Korean middle and high school students.

Methods : In the survey study, the Korean version of Spielberger's trait anxiet scale(1970) and sleep questionnare were administered to 240 H3 students(160 male, 80 female) who go to the same school and live in a large city, Kwangju. Two groups of students with high and low trait anxiety levels(58 in each group) were selected based on the trait anxiety scale ratings and then the differences between the two groups were examined in terms of night sleep and daytime sleepiness on weekdays, as well as experiences of abnormal sleep episodes.

Results : Regarding the night sleep, the high anxiety group estimated their sleep was significantly less refreshing than the low anxiety group despite the fact that there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of bed time, rise time, time in bed, sleep latency, frequency of awakening and awakened methods. On components of night sleep regularity, bed time and sleep length were significantly more irregular in the hight anxiety group than in the low anxiety group whereas rise time did not differ between the two groups. Daytime naps were more frequently taken in the high anxiety group than in the low anxiety group, while the experience of daytime dozing and the situations of dozing were not significantly different between the two groups. Abnormal sleep episodes at night such as difficulty in falling saleep, sleep talking, nightmare, and waking up due to headache, seizure, or leg discomfort were significantly more frequent in the high anxiety group than in the low aniety group.

Conclusion : Although all vriables of sleep are not clearly different between the high and low anxiety groups, the findings demonstrated that trait anxiety may contribute to sleep characteristics in H3 students, and suggested the need for further studies on a variety of behavioral aspects along with daytime learning efficacy associated with sleep restriction in H3 students with high trait anxiety.