Disagreement between subjective and actigraphic measures of sleep duration in a population‐based study of elderly persons*
- 21 August 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Journal of Sleep Research
- Vol. 17 (3), 295-302
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00638.x
Abstract
Sleep duration is an important concept in epidemiological studies. It characterizes a night's sleep or a person's sleep pattern, and is associated with numerous health outcomes. In most large studies, sleep duration is assessed with questionnaires or sleep diaries. As an alternative, actigraphy may be used, as it objectively measures sleep parameters and is feasible in large studies. However, actigraphy and sleep diaries may not measure exactly the same phenomenon. Our study aims to determine disagreement between actigraphic and diary estimates of sleep duration, and to investigate possible determinants of this disagreement. This investigation was embedded in the population-based Rotterdam Study. The study population consisted of 969 community-dwelling participants aged 57-97 years. Participants wore an actigraph and kept a sleep diary for, on average, six consecutive nights. Both measures were used to determine total sleep time (TST). In 34% of the participants, the estimated TST in the sleep diaries deviated more than 1 h from actigraphically measured TST. The level of disagreement between diary and actigraphic measures decreased with subjective and actigraphic measures of sleep quality, and increased with male gender, poor cognitive function and functional disability. Actigraphically measured poor sleep was often accompanied by longer subjective estimates of TST, whereas subjectively poor sleepers tended to report shorter TST in their diaries than was measured with actigraphy. We recommend, whenever possible, to use multiple measures of sleep duration, to perform analyses with both, and to examine the consistency of the results over assessment methodsKeywords
This publication has 45 references indexed in Scilit:
- Association of Usual Sleep Duration With Hypertension: The Sleep Heart Health StudySleep, 2006
- Time Estimation in Good and Poor SleepersJournal of Behavioral Medicine, 2005
- Perception of sleep: Subjective versus objective sleep parameters in patients with Parkinson’s disease in comparison with healthy elderly controlsZeitschrift für Neurologie, 2005
- Correlation of subjective and objective sleep measurements at different stages of the treatment of depressionPsychiatry Research, 2003
- The Role of Actigraphy in the Study of Sleep and Circadian RhythmsSleep, 2003
- A comparison of sleep detection by wrist actigraphy, behavioral response, and polysomnography.Sleep, 1997
- Relationship between objective and subjective sleep measures in depressed patients and healthy controlsDepression and Anxiety, 1997
- The Distribution and Clinical Significance of Sleep Time Misperceptions Among InsomniacsSleep, 1995
- The Pittsburgh sleep quality index: A new instrument for psychiatric practice and researchPsychiatry Research, 1989
- “Mini-mental state”: A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinicianJournal of Psychiatric Research, 1975