Real, misreported, and backfilled adherence with paper sleep diaries.

OBJECTIVE: Paper-based sleep diaries play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of insomnia disorder. Accurate self-report data help to guide therapy and track progress, both in the clinic and during research trials. Previous research with paper diaries suggests that timely adherence with self-report diaries may be an issue, which can result in biased event recall. PATIENTS/METHODS: University students (N = 31) were asked to track their bedtime and wake time within 30 min of these events on paper-based sleep diaries. Specially designed binders covertly timestamped when participants actually wrote on their sleep diary. We assessed adherence by comparing timestamped diary usage with what participants documented in their sleep diary. RESULTS: Participants self-reported they were adherent with sleep diary instructions 97.9% of the time. However, timestamped data revealed that only 37.1% of diary entries were completed within the instructed timeframe. More than half of participants backfilled diary data, and three participants (9.7%) provided data that completely did not match their actual time of completion. CONCLUSIONS: When naïve to the objective tracking of their sleep diary usage, participants greatly over-reported the extent of their adherence. Non-adherence with sleep diary protocols poses a challenge for researchers utilizing this tool as a study outcome in clinical trials and for clinicians attempting to implement behavioral therapies for insomnia.

Sleep quality and characteristics of college students who use prescription psychostimulants nonmedically.

OBJECTIVE: Although psychostimulants have been shown to affect sleep in experimental studies, the relation between nonmedical psychostimulant use and sleep has not been examined. Our goal was to describe the sleep quality and characteristics of college students who use psychostimulant medications nonmedically. METHODS: We surveyed 492 college students about their sleep quality and psychostimulant use characteristics. Sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI); psychostimulant use and characteristics were measured via a survey developed for this study. RESULTS: College students who self-reported current or a history of nonmedical psychostimulant use reported worse subjective sleep quality, sleep disturbance, and global PSQI scores than nonusers. The most commonly reported reason for nonmedical psychostimulant use was to improve work performance and concentration. CONCLUSIONS: These data demonstrate worse sleep quality among nonmedical psychostimulant users. The likely consequence of increased daytime sleepiness helps to confirm the known public health concern of nonmedical prescription psychostimulant use among college students.

Normative longitudinal maternal sleep: the first 4 postpartum months.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the normative course of maternal sleep during the first 4 months postpartum. STUDY DESIGN: Sleep was objectively measured using continuous wrist actigraphy. This was a longitudinal, field-based assessment of nocturnal sleep during postpartum weeks 2 through 16. Fifty mothers participated during postpartum weeks 2 through 13; 24 participated during postpartum weeks 9 through 16. RESULTS: Maternal nocturnal sleep time was 7.2 (SD ± 0.95) hours and did not change significantly across postpartum weeks 2 through 16. Maternal sleep efficiency did improve across weeks 2 (79.7%; SD ± 5.5) through 16 (90.2%; SD ± 3.5) as a function of decreased sleep fragmentation across weeks 2 (21.7; SD ± 5.2) through 16 (12.8; SD ± 3.3). CONCLUSION: Though postpartum mothers' total sleep time was higher than expected during the initial postpartum months, this sleep was highly fragmented (similar to fragmenting sleep disorders) and inefficient. This profile of disturbed sleep should be considered in intervention designs and family leave policies.