The time-of-day that breaks occur between consecutive duty periods affects the sleep strategies used by shiftworkers

The aim of this study was to examine the sleep strategies used in breaks between consecutive shifts. For two weeks, 253 shiftworkers collected data regarding the timing of all shifts and sleeps. The final dataset included 395 between-shift breaks that had a standard duration (i.e. ~16 h). If a break included an entire night, participants had a single sleep on 80–93% of occasions, but if a break occurred predominantly during the daytime, participants had more than one sleep on 41–50% of occasions. These data indicate that the sleep strategy employed is influenced by the time-of-day that a break occurs.