The Journal of

Introduction: Sleep problems are taken into account as a prevalent problem within school-age children that is normally ignored in spite of its high prevalence. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the frequency of sleep problems within elementary students in Kashan.

Methods: This study is descriptive-cross sectional, in which 300 children (7-12 years old) of Kashan elementary schools were randomly selected via cluster sampling method. The study instruments for data collection involved questions concerning children's age and sex as well as BEAR'S questionnaire, which were filled by the children's mothers. Moreover, the study data were analyzed by descriptive statistics method (mean and standard deviation), independent sample T-test was used to compare mean of sleep duration and Mann-Whitney u test was applied to evaluate the difference between age and sex groups.

Results: Totally, 300 children participated in this study, among which 44.3% were boys and 55.7% were girls. The most common sleep problems involved nightmare and resistance against a wakening. Relative frequency of awakening during night was observed to be higher within boys than girls (p<0.05).

Conclusion: High frequency of sleep problems in the current study may indicate the significance of taking sleep problems into consideration within students as well as informing healthy sleep patterns in order to promote knowledge level of parents via schools and parent-teacher meetings.