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[Comparative study of children's sleep evaluation methods]
Wen-juan Chen1, Feng Li, Sheng-hui Li
1Shanghai Children Medical Center Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Ministry of Education Shanghai Key Laboratory of Children's Environmental Health, Shanghai 200127, China.
Insights
Parent sleep diaries show high agreement with Actiwatch for children's sleep patterns. Sleep questionnaires are easy to use but less accurate for sleep duration. Choose methods based on research needs.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Sleep Medicine
- Child Psychology
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Accurate assessment of children's sleep patterns is crucial for understanding their development and well-being.
- Various methods exist for sleep monitoring, including actigraphy, sleep diaries, and questionnaires, each with unique advantages and limitations.
- Comparing the compliance and agreement rates of these methods is essential for selecting the most appropriate tools for research and clinical practice.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the compliance of using Actiwatch (actigraphy), parent-reported sleep diaries, and sleep questionnaires in school-aged children.
- To evaluate the agreement rates between actigraphy, sleep diaries, and questionnaires for assessing children's sleep patterns.
- To provide guidance on selecting suitable sleep assessment methods based on research objectives and sample characteristics.
Main Methods:
- A 7-day home monitoring study involving first-grade students from two primary schools.
- Concurrent use of Actiwatch devices, parent-completed sleep diaries, and sleep questionnaires.
- Data analysis focused on completion rates and agreement statistics between the three sleep assessment methods.
Main Results:
- Thirty-six out of 45 children completed all three sleep assessments.
- Questionnaires had 100% completion, while sleep diaries (86.7%) and Actiwatch (93.3%) had lower, yet high, completion rates.
- Sleep diaries demonstrated satisfactory agreement with Actiwatch, with minor overestimations of sleep duration (25-26 minutes).
- Sleep questionnaires showed insufficient agreement with Actiwatch, overestimating sleep duration significantly (37-38 minutes).
Conclusions:
- Parent-completed sleep diaries offer a reliable and highly agreeable method for assessing children's sleep patterns when compared to actigraphy.
- Sleep questionnaires are user-friendly with high compliance but exhibit lower agreement for sleep duration, making them less suitable for precise quantitative sleep assessment.
- The choice of sleep assessment method in pediatric research should be carefully considered based on the specific research aims, desired precision, and sample characteristics.
Objective:
To compare the compliance of using Actiwatch, parent report of sleep diary and sleep questionnaire in school age children, and to further evaluate agreement rates between actigraphy, diary, and questionnaire for children's sleep patterns.
Method:
Two primary schools in Luwan District were selected and first grade students without obvious physical and mental illnesses or sleep disorders were enrolled in the study. Each student was home-monitored with an Actiwatch for 7 days, meanwhile parents were asked to complete a detailed sleep diary during the Actiwatch monitoring days. Sleep questionnaires were distributed to their parents who were asked to fill in these on the last monitoring day.
Result:
Forty-five children participated in the study, 36 children completed sleep assessments by all the three methods, and among them 20 were boys and 16 were girls. The mean age of those children was (7.26±0.42) years. The completion rate of questionnaire was 100%, of diary was 86.7% (39/45) and of Actiwatch was 93.3% (42/45). The completion rate between sleep diary and sleep questionnaire was significantly different (P<0.05). The satisfactory agreement between Actiwatch and sleep diary was reached with sleep diary overestimating weekday and weekend sleep duration by 26 minutes and 25 minutes respectively. The agreement rates between Actiwatch and questionnaire was insufficient for all variables with sleep questionnaire overestimating weekday and weekend sleep duration by 37 minutes and 38 minutes respectively.
Conclusion:
Sleep questionnaire is an easy and high compliance method for evaluating children's sleep pattern while sleep diary showed high agreement with Actiwatch. Using either of these methods for evaluating children's sleep pattern should be judged by research aim and sample size, and limitation of those methods should be considered when they are used in practice.
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