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Reliability and validity of a brief sleep questionnaire for children in Japan
Masakazu Okada1, Shingo Kitamura2, Yoshitaka Iwadare3
1Department of Kansei Science, Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Science, Kyushu University, 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540, Japan.
Insights
A new, brief sleep questionnaire for children shows reliable and valid results for early detection of sleep problems. This tool offers similar screening ability to the CSHQ, making it convenient for clinical use.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Sleep Medicine
- Psychometric Instrument Development
- Child Psychiatry
Background:
- Limited availability of brief, validated sleep questionnaires for early childhood sleep problem detection.
- Need for reliable screening tools in both clinical and community pediatric settings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a concise sleep questionnaire for children.
- To evaluate the reliability and validity of this new instrument.
- To assess its utility in identifying sleep disorders in at-risk and general pediatric populations.
Main Methods:
- Developed a 19-item questionnaire as a subset of the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ).
- Analyzed data from 178 elementary school children and 432 pediatric psychiatric patients (aged 6-12 years).
- Assessed internal consistency, discriminant validity, sensitivity, and specificity using established statistical methods and CSHQ benchmarks.
Main Results:
- The short questionnaire demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.65).
- It exhibited good discriminant validity, sensitivity (0.83), and specificity (0.78) compared to the CSHQ.
- Total scores on the new questionnaire significantly correlated with CSHQ total and subscale scores (r = 0.81, p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
- The developed short sleep questionnaire is a reliable and valid tool for children.
- It shows comparable screening performance to the CSHQ.
- This instrument offers a convenient option for detecting sleep problems in pediatric populations.
Background:
There is a dearth of sleep questionnaires with few items and confirmed reliability and validity that can be used for the early detection of sleep problems in children. The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire with few items and assess its reliability and validity in both children at high risk of sleep disorders and a community population.
Methods:
Data for analysis were derived from two populations targeted by the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ): 178 children attending elementary school and 432 children who visited a pediatric psychiatric hospital (aged 6-12 years). The new questionnaire was constructed as a subset of the CSHQ.
Results:
The newly developed short version of the sleep questionnaire for children (19 items) had an acceptable internal consistency (0.65). Using the cutoff value of the CSHQ, the total score of the new questionnaire was confirmed to have discriminant validity (27.2 ± 3.9 vs. 22.0 ± 2.1, p < 0.001) and yielded a sensitivity of 0.83 and specificity of 0.78 by receiver operator characteristic curve analysis. Total score of the new questionnaire was significantly correlated with total score (r = 0.81, p < 0.001) and each subscale score (r = 0.29-0.65, p < 0.001) of the CSHQ.
Conclusions:
The new questionnaire demonstrated an adequate reliability and validity in both high-risk children and a community population, as well as similar screening ability to the CSHQ. It could thus be a convenient instrument to detect sleep problems in children.
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