The aim in this research was to evaluate the sleep quality of college students in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 701 students from the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), from March to June 2011. We used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Most students presented poor subjective sleep quality (54%), sleep latency in less than 15 minutes (60.1%) and efficiency under 65% (99%). In the sample, the sleep duration was of 6.3 hours per day (SD±1.4 hours) (p<0.001). Data analysis revealed that a substantial portion of the college students (95.3%) surveyed presented poor sleep quality. It is essential to operationalize health promotion actions at the universities in such a way that the students construct their own quality of sleep.
Sleep; Sleep disorders; Students; Nursing
