ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: There is a paucity of sleep questionnaires that have been psychometrically validated for use in school-aged children. Due to the limitation regarding the psychometric properties and the great variety in question design, there remains a need for a robust omnibus questionnaire that assesses sleep problems in community populations. This study aimed to develop such a questionnaire for school-aged children by assessing the construct validity and reliability of a questionnaire based on a combination of children's sleep domains from two frequently used and validated questionnaires (Habits Questionnaire and Sleep Disorders Scale for Children) and author devised questions. PATIENTS/METHODS: Parents of 1904 children aged 5-10 years (mean 7.7 ± 1.7 years) from 32 elementary schools in Adelaide, South Australia, completed the questionnaire. RESULTS: Principal axis factoring revealed six unique sub-scales--Sleep Routine, Bedtime Anxiety, Morning Tiredness, Night Arousals, Sleep Disordered Breathing, and Restless Sleep--containing a total of 26 items. Internal consistency for sub-scales were moderate to strong (range α = 0.6-0.8) and test-retest reliability was adequate (>0.4). T-score cut-offs were devised for age and sex. CONCLUSION: The new questionnaire provides a robust set of sleep problem sub-scales which can be used for assessment of sleep concerns in a community sample as well as provide for optimal analysis of associations with other measures of childhood daytime functioning such as neurocognition and behaviour.
Subject(s)
Psychometrics/methods , Psychometrics/standards , Sleep Wake Disorders/diagnosis , Sleep Wake Disorders/psychology , Surveys and Questionnaires/standards , Child , Child Behavior , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Reproducibility of Results , Sleep , Sleep StagesABSTRACT
Driver fatigue remains a significant cause of motor-vehicle accidents worldwide. New technologies are increasingly utilised to improve road safety, but there are no effective on-road measures for fatigue. While simulated driving tasks are sensitive, and simple performance tasks have been used in industrial fatigue management systems (FMS) to quantify risk, little is known about the relationship between such measures. Establishing a simple, on-road measure of fatigue, as a fitness-to-drive tool, is an important issue for road safety and accident prevention, particularly as many fatigue related accidents are preventable. This study aimed to measure fatigue-related performance decrements using a simple task (reaction time - RT) and a complex task (driving simulation), and to determine the potential for a link between such measures, thus improving FMS success. Fifteen volunteer participants (7 m, 8 f) aged 22-56 years (mean 33.6 years), underwent 26 h of supervised wakefulness before an 8h recovery sleep opportunity. Participants were tested using a 30-min interactive driving simulation test, bracketed by a 10-min psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) at 4, 8, 18 and 24h of wakefulness, and following recovery sleep. Extended wakefulness caused significant decrements in PVT and driving performance. Although these measures are clearly linked, our analyses suggest that driving simulation cannot be replaced by a simple PVT. Further research is needed to closely examine links between performance measures, and to facilitate accurate management of fitness to drive, which requires more complex assessments of performance than RT alone.
