Sleep/Wake Research Centre

30/11/2025

🌟 Congratulations to Kavita Kashyap! 🎉

On Friday, Kavita graduated with a Master of Science (Psychology), supervised by Prof Leigh Signal and co-supervised by Dr Dee Muller.

📚 Thesis Title - Teen Sleep, Emotional Well-Being and Mental Health: A Qualitative Study

This experiential qualitative research explored what adolescents think about their sleep, emotional well-being, and mental health - and the connections between these concepts. Through interviews with 12 adolescents at a North Island school, Kavita gained insights using reflexive thematic analysis.

✅ Adolescents have a detailed understanding of these interrelated aspects of their lives, and shared ideas on how families and schools can better support them.

💡 These findings can inform adolescent health policies, care strategies, and interventions, emphasising the importance of working with young people to improve outcomes.

👏 Well done, Kavita, on contributing valuable knowledge to adolescent health and well-being!

29/11/2025

🎓 Congratulations to Dr Jonathan Peters! 🎉

Jonathan has graduated with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, supervised by A/Prof Ian de Terte, with co-supervisors Prof Leigh Signal, LTCDR Egidia Bernerius, and Helen Kilding.

📖 Thesis Title: Wireless and Tiredness: Investigating Interrelated Influences of Electronic Media Use, Sleep, and Fatigue

Jonathan’s research examined how electronic media use, sleep, and fatigue interact. He developed a conceptual framework to understand these relationships and mapped existing evidence through an umbrella scoping review. Building on this, he designed a novel intervention to encourage self-directed electronic media use to support sleep health, testing it with sailors in active duty in Te Taua Moana o Aotearoa, The Royal New Zealand Navy, using a multiple-baseline single-case experimental design.

The study found no immediate effects, but found longer-term improvements in subjective fatigue at six-month follow-up, though these changes could not be attributed solely to the intervention. His thesis also explores the conceptual, theoretical, and practical challenges of researching these complex topics.

👏 Well done, Jonathan, on this important contribution to understanding media use, sleep, and fatigue!

28/11/2025

⭐ We are looking for research participants for 2026 ⭐

You are invited to participate in our research study, which will help us find out more about how caffeine consumption affects sleep and vice versa.

Who can participate?
We are looking for people who are:
• Currently living in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Aged 18-64 years old
• Working at least 30 hours per week
• In good general health with no current medical condition and/or not taking medication that is likely to affect your sleep
• A non-smoker

What’s involved?
First, you will complete a set of online questionnaires (20-30 minutes in total) to check if you are eligible. If you are selected, you will need to wear a sleep/wake activity monitor (actigraph) and complete a daily sleep diary for 14 days. You’ll start these activities in early 2026.

Find out more: https://tinyurl.com/CaffeineSleepNZ
Please share with anyone you think might be interested!

12/11/2025

🌍 This week, Sleep/Wake Researchers Leigh Signal and Karyn O'Keeffe are at the Working Time Society Shiftwork Symposium in Brazil, sharing their research and hearing from others who focus on shift work for their research and work.

✈️ Leigh has presented her insights on fatigue management based on her work in aviation: managing fatigue in safety-critical operations and changing crew behaviours isn’t just about fatigue science - combining that science with operational knowledge is key 🗝️

🩺 Karyn is presenting findings from a nationwide survey of healthcare leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand, completed in collaboration with Linsey Steege from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. This work provides important insights into how leaders view fatigue in healthcare - and what that means for managing risk.

Karyn is also presenting findings from a systematic review completed with Sleep/Wake Researchers Dee Muller and Leigh Signal. The team evaluated differences in health and performance between permanent night work 🌙 and rotating shift work with night shifts 🔄- a critical question for industries relying on 24/7 operations. 🧠 At the conference, Karyn is sharing the review’s findings on mental health outcomes.

16/10/2025

Sleep/Wake Researchers, Dee Muller and Leigh Signal, recently wrote an article about how good sleep can support good mental health, and the research they are doing in this area. Check out the article if you're interested in knowing more about their research and their tips for good sleep.

By Professor Leigh Signal and Dr Dee Muller.

07/10/2025

⭐ Superstar sleep/wake researcher, Dee Muller, was a recent guest on an episode of the Speak Up - Kōrerotia podcast, along with Jasneek Chawla and Sally Staton from The University of Queensland. They chatted about the importance of sleep, helpful ways of thinking about it, how it is essential that its importance is recognised among health professionals and others, how it supports wellbeing in young people, and how social inequities can have a profound impact on sleep. It's well worth a listen! https://plains.org.nz/episode/867390a2-3675-4472-aec9-7b32928c7b59

We don't often consider sleep a human right - yet, it is fundamental to our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as our day-to-day cognitive and social functioning. Guests Dee Muller (Sleep/Wake Research Centre), Jasneek Chawla (Child Health Research Centre, The University of Queensland; Australasian Sleep Association) and Sally Staton (Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland) discuss the importance of sleep, and how sleep is both shaped by and perpetuates social inequities.

10/09/2025

The Sleep/Wake Research Centre team has been at the WorldSleep conference in Singapore this week. We have thoroughly crammed our brains with new research on sleep, circadian rhythms and shift work and look forward to sharing our new knowledge with those we work with.

10/07/2025

⭐ Inviting women living with cancer in Aotearoa New Zealand to complete a short SURVEY ⭐

All women aged 25-65 who have been diagnosed with cancer are invited to take part in a short survey on sleep and mood.

By sharing your experiences, you will help support the development of resources to support sleep and mood for women with cancer.

👉 The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete. To participate, follow the link: https://tinyurl.com/sleepmoodsurvey

👉 As a thank-you, participants will have the opportunity to enter a draw to win one of ten $30 supermarket vouchers

Please share this important work with your networks and anyone you think might be interested in participating. The study is being conducted by one of our PhD Candidates.

24/06/2025

Participate in our research project!

📣 Calling all people with endometriosis who have experienced sleep difficulties 📣

You are invited to take part in our research study exploring the role of sleep in endometriosis, healthcare decisions and experiences. Your input can help shed light on an often-overlooked aspect of endometriosis care: sleep.

What’s involved?

You’ll complete a 15-30 minute anonymous online survey about your experiences with sleep, endometriosis symptoms, and healthcare decisions related to sleep. As a thank you, you’ll have the option to enter a draw to win a $50 Prezzee voucher after completing the survey.

Found out more: https://tinyurl.com/EndoSleepNZ

22/05/2025

💤Are you someone who pushes the snooze button in the morning? 🤔
The usual advice is to avoid using a snooze alarm in the morning. It is thought that people get more sleep and reduce feeling groggy on waking if they get up when their alarm first goes off.

However, there is little research on the use of snooze alarms. The research that does exist suggests their use is common. It has been estimated that 30-60% of people use a snooze alarm and typically push snooze more than once. People who naturally sleep later tend to use a snooze alarm more than people who naturally go to bed and wake earlier.

A recent study by Rebecca Robbins and colleagues investigated the use of snooze alarms in 21,222 users of a sleep tracking app over more than 3 million nights. They found:
1️⃣ Snooze button use is quite common. More than half of all sleep sessions ended with the push of the snooze button.
2️⃣ Almost half of the app users used a snooze alarm on most days (at least 80% of the time), and about a third pushed the snooze button 40-60% of the time.
3️⃣ On average, people who used snooze alarms on most days pushed the snooze button 4 times and snoozed for about 20 minutes. Those who used the snooze button on fewer days tended to push it fewer times and snooze for shorter periods.
4️⃣ Snoozing was less common on the weekend than on weekdays.
5️⃣ Snoozing was more common in longer sleepers and those who went to bed later.

So, why might people push the snooze button?
👉 Some people may not be getting enough, good quality sleep at regular times. Feeling unrested when waking up might increase the desire to push the snooze button.
👉 Feeling groggy on waking means it can be harder to bounce out of bed. It is possible that people use a snooze alarm to help with the wake-up process.
👉 Some people naturally have later bedtimes than others. These people fall asleep later and naturally wake up later than the average person. When required to wake at times required to get to work or school, they can feel groggy and unrested on waking. They may push the snooze button because they don’t feel they have had enough sleep.
👉 Shift workers are more likely to have short sleep and feel less rested when they wake up because they are sleeping at times when they are designed to be awake. Feeling unrested when waking up may lead to a desire for more sleep and pushing the snooze button.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions on snooze button use. There is an opportunity to learn more about the reasons people push a snooze button and how that links to their sleep behaviours and overall sleep health. From there, tailored guidance on snooze button use can be developed. While general guidelines exist for good sleep, many strategies are not one-size-fits-all. Snooze button use might signal that sleep support is needed, or instead, may have a sleep-supporting role we have not yet identified.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-99563-y

Snooze alarm use is a common, but poorly understood human behavior. We explore the prevalence and characteristics of snooze alarm use in more than 3 million nights collected in a global sample of users of a sleep monitoring smartphone application. On the nights that participants logged a sleep....

11/05/2025

⭐ Inviting Women with Cancer in New Zealand to complete a short SURVEY ⭐

We are inviting all women aged 25-65 diagnosed with cancer to take part in a short survey on sleep and mood.

By sharing your experiences, you will help us develop resources to support sleep and mood for women with cancer.

👉 The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete. To participate, follow the link: https://tinyurl.com/sleepmoodsurvey

👉 As a thank-you for participating, you will have the opportunity to enter a draw to win one of ten $30 supermarket vouchers

14/03/2025

Sleep/Wake researcher, Dr Dee Muller, gave a fantastic and thought-provoking presentation today in celebration of World Sleep Day. This year's theme is 'make sleep a priority'. As Dee highlighted, a wide range of social and societal factors mean that healthy sleep may not be achievable by all.