ArticlePloS one2021
The association between depressive symptoms and self-reported sleep difficulties among college students: Truth or reporting bias?
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- The characteristics of depression and sleep among Chinese high school students: A cross-sectional study.Medicine · 2026Article
- Application of the Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Patient-Reported Outcome Measure (IPF-PROM) scale to a Greek IPF patient population and its interrelation with depressive symptoms and health-related quality of life.BMJ open respiratory research · 2026Observational
- The association of objectively and subjectively measured modifiable lifestyle factors with internalizing problems: the role of genetic confounding and shared method variance bias.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- Impact of Poor Sleep Quality on Task Switching and Reconfiguration Process Among University Students.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The strong association between self-reported sleep difficulties and depressive symptoms is well documented. However, individuals who suffer from depressive symptoms could potentially interpret the values attached to a subjective scale differently from others, making comparisons of sleep difficulties across individuals with different depressive symptoms problematic. The objective of this study is to determine the existence and magnitude of reporting heterogeneity in subjective assessment of sleep difficulties by those who have depressive symptoms. We implement an online survey using Visual Analogue Scales and anchoring vignettes to study the comparability of subjective assessments of sleep difficulties among college students in Switzerland (N = 1, 813). Using multivariate linear regressions and double-index models, our analysis shows that reporting heterogeneity plays only a marginal role in moderating the association between sleep difficulties and depression, irrespective of the severity of the depressive symptoms of the individuals. This suggests that unadjusted comparisons of self-reported sleep difficulties between college students are meaningful, even among individuals with depressive symptoms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.