Utility of Subjective Sleep Assessment Tools for Healthy Preschool Children: A Comparative Study Between Sleep Logs, Questionnaires, and Actigraphy

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Background: Sleep pattern is an important factor in a child’s mental, behavioural and physical status. To evaluatethe sleep patterns of children, subjective tools such as sleep logs and questionnaires are still widely used in addition toobjective methods of sleep assessment. Despite the established correlation between subjective and objective sleepvariables, the characteristic features of subjective assessment have not been elucidated.Methods: To investigate the characteristics of parental sleep assessment (daily sleep log and brief questionnaire) inpreschool children, a 7-day actigraphic sleep study was conducted in 48 healthy 5-year-old children.Results: Sleep schedule variables in the parental reports generally correlated well with actigraphic assessment ofsleep patterns; however, sleep periods were longer in parental reports than in actigraphic recordings. Although thedaily sleep log was better correlated with actigraphy, the brief questionnaire showed a good correlation with sleeppattern on weekday actigraphic assessments. Parental reports recorded fewer than 10% of the night wakings recordedby actigraphy.Conclusions: Subjective sleep assessments remain useful, although their utility depends on the purpose and size ofthe study in question. However, knowledge of the potential biases and characteristics of such assessments is essentialfor correct interpretation of the data.
2010-03-01