Major Findings

Sports and Exercise
A sizeable proportion of the Holy Cross students exercise regularly, often as members of sport teams. Nearly a third of the sample reported that they had been on a varsity intercollegiate sport team; over a quarter of these students were no longer participating, yielding a total of 55, or 23.2 percent, who were current varsity athletes. This level of participation is very close to the Athletic Department's estimated 25 percent of the Holy Cross student body who are intercollegiate athletes. In addition, 31 percent of the sample had participated on a club sports team and 40 percent had competed in intramural sports. All told, the survey indicated that 7 in 10 Holy Cross students compete either in a varsity, club, or intramural sport.

Given the level of sport participation, it is not surprising that many students regularly engage in aerobic, stretching, and strength exercise. Table 5.1 shows the percentage of students who reported that they exercised 0, 1-2, 3-4, or 5-7 days within the past week and the average number of days students worked out. The vast majority of the sample performed some form of exercise at least three of the past seven days; fewer than 8 percent reported that they did not exercise at all, including walking for 30 minutes at a time. As expected, current varsity athletes worked out more often than others, averaging over 5 days a week of aerobic exercise and stretching. Men also did aerobic exercise more frequently than women, but otherwise there were no gender differences.

These data indicate a high level of physical activity among Holy Cross students. Compared with college students nationally, they are far more likely to compete on a sport team and to exercise regularly. According to the NCHRBS, for example, in 1995 25.8 percent of students at 4-year colleges-less than half as many as at Holy Cross-reported that they had participated on either an intramural or extramural sport team. And in contrast to the over 60 percent of Holy Cross students who perform aerobic exercise at least three days a week, less than 40 percent of NCHRBS respondents at 4-year colleges worked out this often. On the other hand, evidence from Shulman and Bowen's The Game of Life suggests that comparable levels of sport participation and general physical activity would be found at many other coed, liberal arts colleges, where it is not unusual for intercollegiate athletes to make up 25 percent or more of the student body.

Table 5.1. Percentage of Holy Cross students who engaged in various forms of exercise 0 to 7 days during the past 7 days.

Sleep
Amy Wolfson's and others' research shows that adolescents in general and college students in particular have a distinctive habitual sleep pattern marked by radically different sleep-wake cycles on weekdays versus weekends, insufficient sleep during the school week, and prolonged sleep on the weekends. To a great extent, Holy Cross students fit this pattern. Asked when they went to bed and got up, students reported that on weekdays they went to bed, on average, at 1:06 a.m. and got up at 8:38, whereas on weekends they went to bed at 2:45 a.m. and got up at 10:53. This resulted in about 7½ hours sleep during the week and 8 hours on the weekend. On the one hand, these figures suggest that Holy Cross students are getting more sleep than students at many other colleges and universities. For example, in a 2001 study of over 1,500 undergraduates, students who were asked to estimate their usual sleep duration reported a mean of 6.65 hours. On the other hand, the sleep duration reported by Holy Cross students is well below the 8½ to 9 hours recommended by many sleep researchers to meet the sleep needs of this age group for adequate daytime alertness.

The variability between weekday and weekend sleep and wake-up times is one symptom of delayed sleep phase syndrome, which is associated with various sleep difficulties, including excessive daytime sleepiness. When we asked students how often over the past two weeks they felt tired, dragged out, or sleepy during the day, more than 50 percent reported "several times" and nearly 10 percent reported "every day." About one-quarter of the sample also reported that "several times" during the past two weeks they had experienced unusual difficulty waking up in the morning.

Students generally have little difficulty in either getting to sleep or staying asleep. The majority (61%) reported that it takes them less than 15 minutes to fall asleep at night, while only 13 percent took longer than 30 minutes. In addition, less than one quarter of the sample woke up more than once during the night. And when they were awakened during the night, very few students took more than 5 to 15 minutes to fall asleep again.

One way to make up for nighttime sleep deficiency is to take naps. The majority of the sample (56%) reported that they took a nap or fell asleep unintentionally during the day, almost always in the afternoon or early evening, with the naps lasting an average of a little more than one hour. About half of the students who took naps did so three to four times a week or more.

There was very little difference between men and women in the above patterns. Women tended to go to bed and wake up a little earlier than men, but only average weekday wakeup time-women arose 23 minutes earlier than men-was statistically significant. There were some important variations, however, by academic class. During the week, first- and second-year students tended to get up, respectively, 30 and 50 minutes earlier than third- and fourth-year students; consequently, they also tended to get less sleep on weekday nights. And while members of all classes were equally likely to report that they ever took naps, first-year students who napped took naps an average of nearly four days a week compared to fewer than three days for nappers in the other classes. The frequency of napping was inversely correlated with the amount of weekday sleep that students reported; and so, getting less sleep could partially account for why first-year students napped more frequently than others. However, if this were the only explanation, second-year students, who get even less sleep than first-year students, would have napped just as often. Therefore, something unique about the first-year experience, perhaps a combination of overrepresentation in early morning classes and the adjustment in sleep schedules from high school to college, may explain why first-year students nap so frequently.

Eating, Drinking, and Smoking
With the survey's emphasis on sleep and an interview length limited to 15-20 minutes, we asked relatively few questions about students' eating and drinking habits. Over 90 percent of the sample reported that it was "somewhat" or "very important" to them to maintain a healthy diet. Consistent with this intention, students infrequently ate foods that were high in fat content. For example, half of the respondents said that they eat red meat less than once a week; more than a third said that they eat bakery products (e.g., cakes, cookies, and donuts) as well as French fries and chips less than once a week. Although men and women were equally likely to affirm the importance of maintaining a healthy diet, men ate red meat, fries and chips far more often than women.

The healthy diet of students does not extend, however, to alcohol use. Abundant evidence shows a high level of alcohol consumption among undergraduates, with especially high levels among students at residential colleges located in the Northeast region of the United States. According to recent national surveys, almost half of college students engage in episodic heavy drinking. At Holy Cross, this pattern is common. According to the fall HCSS, three-quarters of the students consume alcohol 1-2 times a week or more, averaging between five and six drinks (e.g., a bottle of beer or glass of wine) on "a typical weekend night." Nearly three-quarters of the respondents said that they had drunk alcoholic beverages within the past week. And applying the standard measure of binge drinking-five or more drinks in a row for men and four or more for women, two-thirds of the respondents reported that they had binged within the past two weeks.

Consistent with national surveys, men drank more often and consumed more drinks at one time than women. Although some national surveys have shown no difference between students above and below the legal drinking age, age was directly related to consumption in the fall HCSS. Nearly a third (30 percent) of the first-year students, as compared with fewer than 10 percent of second-, third-, and fourth-year students, reported that they abstained from drinking. But among those who drink, first-year students consumed about as many drinks just about as often as others.

Finally, relatively few Holy Cross students-about 1 in 10-smoke tobacco. The question we asked- "Do you smoke?"-was included in the General Social Survey for many years. The last time it was asked in the GSS, in 1994, slightly less than 30 percent of the national sample said "yes." When students in the 1995 NCHRBS were asked a differently worded question about smoking ("During the past 30 days, on how many days did you smoke cigarettes?"), 29 percent reported that they had smoked. So, it appears that Holy Cross students are much less likely than the general population or their cohort of college students nationally to smoke tobacco.

General Physical and Mental Health
We also asked students about their general physical and mental health, mainly to see if these conditions were related to the other health dimensions described above. Table 5.2 shows how often during the past two weeks students reported that they had suffered from a cold or the flu, an upset stomach, a bad headache, and nasal problems. Without comparable data from other institutions, we cannot say whether the reported incidence of these ailments is unusually high or problematic. While a sizeable number of students suffered from each ailment, they seldom required professional care or treatment, as only 15 percent of the sample reported that they had gone to campus health services or seen a doctor during the same time frame. Breakdowns by gender and class produced only one significant difference: women were more likely than men to suffer from a bad headache. Preliminary analyses also indicated that none of these conditions was related to amount of exercise, total sleep or wake up times, nutrition, or drinking.

Table 5.2. Percentage of times during the past two weeks that Holy Cross students suffered from various health problems.

Only one dimension of students' mental health was measured: depressive mood. Students were asked how often they had experienced each of six feelings within the last two weeks: "feeling too tired to do things"; "having trouble going to sleep or staying asleep"; "feeling unhappy, sad, or depressed"; "feeling hopeless about the future"; "feeling nervous or tense"; and "worrying too much about things." When responses to these questions were summed to create the Depressive Mood Scale, scale scores were found to be related to gender and to other health factors. Consistent with past research, women scored higher on depressive mood than men. Also, preliminary analyses indicated that depressive mood was directly related to physical health and inversely related to amount of exercise. But we cannot know from these data whether poor physical health and lack of exercise are causes or consequences of depressive mood.