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REVIEW article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1421026
This article is part of the Research Topic Sex Differences in Sleep and Circadian Rhythms View all articles

Inclusion, reporting and analysis of demographic variables in chronobiology and sleep research

Provisionally accepted
Selma Tir Selma Tir 1Rhiannon White Rhiannon White 2Manuel Spitschan Manuel Spitschan 3,4*
  • 1 University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
  • 2 University of Warwick, Coventry, West Midlands, United Kingdom
  • 3 Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
  • 4 Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Many aspects of sleep and circadian physiology are sensitive to participant-level characteristics. While recent research robustly highlights the importance of considering participant-level demographic information, the extent to which this information is consistently collected, and reported in the literature, remains unclear. This article investigates study sample characteristics within the published sleep and chronobiology research over the past 40 years. 6,777 articles were identified and a random sample of 20% was included. The reporting of sample size, age, sex, gender, ethnicity, level of education, socio-economic status, and profession of the study population was scored, and any reported aggregate summary statistics for these variables were recorded. We observed a significant upward trend in the reporting and analysis of demographic variables in sleep and chronobiology research. However, we found that while >90% of studies reported age or sex, all other variables were reported in <25% of cases. Reporting quality was highly variable, indicating an opportunity to standardize reporting guidelines for participant-level characteristics to facilitate meta analyses.

    Keywords: Sleep, circadian rhythms, diversity, REPORTING, Demographics

    Received: 21 Apr 2024; Accepted: 07 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tir, White and Spitschan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Manuel Spitschan, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.