There are increasing numbers of secondary school students in Uganda suffering from poor sleep quality and psychological wellbeing problems. There have been many complaints from students and teachers about boarding secondary students sleeping and others dozing in class when lessons are going on. Increased competition for academic excellence has caused most boarding secondary schools in Uganda to have school schedule requirements which necessitate students to study the whole day, partly at night and very early in the morning. These tendencies appear to be affecting sleep quality adversely thereby influencing psychological wellbeing and the resulting standards of academic performance. The study, therefore, sought to: analyse sleep quality, examine the factors affecting sleep quality, assess the psychological wellbeing and investigate the association between sleep quality and psychological wellbeing of boarding secondary school students in Uganda. Cross sectional survey design was adopted and the specific methods were questionnaire survey, interviews, observations and focus group discussions. A sample of 617 students aged 12-17 years in 24 boarding secondary schools in Uganda, 72 teachers and 4 inspectors of schools were used in the study that employed a multi-stage random cluster sampling design, stratified, systematic and purposive sampling procedures and data were collected through self-administered questionnaires. Sleep quality was analysed using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and psychological wellbeing was assessed using emotional wellbeing questionnaire. Correlations between variables were analysed using spearman’s correlation to determine the relationship between variables and sleep quality and linear regression was used to establish the linkage between the sleep quality variable and psychological wellbeing variable. The findings revealed that more than half (59.2%) of the students were experiencing poor sleep quality and a majority of the students (50.3% who had poor sleep quality also suffered poor psychological wellbeing. The study also established that good sleep quality significantly predicted good psychological wellbeing (𝛽=0.778, p=0.02) and poor sleep quality significantly predicted poor psychological wellbeing (𝛽=-0.640, p=0.03) and that 53.9% change in the psychological wellbeing among students was attributed to the quality of sleep. The study, therefore, generated and developed measures that could be used improve the quality of sleep in order to enhance psychological wellbeing for better standards of academic performance. Awareness must also be created among school community in order to derive the full significance of the study. This study contributes to the model of quality of life by supporting the claims for the importance of good sleep quality in relation to a student’s ability to achieve overall psychological wellbeing.

The study analyzed the students’ sleep quality, examined their psychological well-being, and assessed the influence of sleep quality of boarding secondary school students on their psychological well-being.