Disqualified and qualified poor sleepers: Subjective and objective variables.

Abstract

Sleep laboratory studies of patients complaining of insomnia have demonstrated discrepancies between subjective reports and electroencephalograph (EEG)-recorded measures. In our research studies on sleeping aids, 60% of the self-described poor sleepers who reported usual sleep latencies of at least 45 min did not meet the laboratory qualification criterion of a 30-min or longer sleep latency. To learn to predict who would qualify for our studies, we compared 30 laboratory-qualified poor sleepers (QPSs) with 30 laboratory-disqualified poor sleepers (DPSs) on subjective report, mood, and all-night sleep laboratory variables. QPSs had significantly lower sleep efficiency and total sleep time in the laboratory, but these differences were due to the longer sleep latencies (50.7 ± 27.8 min vs. 15.2 ± 6.1 min) of the QPS group. QPSs and DPSs differed significantly in their morning estimates of their laboratory sleep latencies; as a group, QPSs gave an accurate estimate (51.6 ± 27.8 min), but DPSs were significantly more likely to exaggerate their sleep latencies. Although we did not identify ways of predicting which poor sleepers would show sleep-onset insomnia in the sleep laboratory, we did find that, in this young, healthy population, there are poor sleepers who give an accurate report of a rather severe sleep-onset insomnia.Sleep-onset insomnia -difficulty in falling asleep -is a common sleep problem. In sleep laboratory studies, polysomnographic evaluations of patients complaining of insomnia have demonstrated discrepancies between subjective reports and electroencephalograph (EEG)-recorded sleep measures. Self-described insomniacs have been found to overestimate sleep latencies and underestimate total sleep time (

Hyperarousal Is Associated with Socioemotional Processing in Individuals with Insomnia Symptoms and Good Sleepers

“…Except for diary reports of less total sleep time, no significant differences in sleep between good sleepers and individuals with insomnia in the full sample were observed. The finding that individuals with insomnia symptoms subjectively reported less total sleep time than good sleepers in their sleep diaries, despite no observable differences in PSG measure of total sleep time, is consistent with the existing literature (e.g., [77][78][79][80]). We identified that eight of the fourteen insomnia participants had a night of poor sleep, while six of the fourteen insomnia participants had a good night of sleep.…”

Characteristics of sleep in patients with stable heart failure versus a comparison group

“…Although self-report studies provide important information on the subjective experience of sleep disturbance, they are typically poorly correlated with objective measures of sleep. 23,24 Past studies of sleep-disordered breathing, on the other hand, used only cardiorespiratory and electroencephalogram measurement in the sleep laboratory setting and provided little information about sleep occurring during daily life. Combining objective sleep measures with subjective indicators may assist in quantifying characteristics of sleep and group-related differences and may also provide a more complete perspective on the nature of sleep disturbance.…”

Survey context and question wording affects self reported annoyance due to road traffic noise: a comparison between two cross-sectional studies

“…measuring movements, EEG, blood pressure or other advanced techniques. On the other hand some researchers have chosen to question the validity of self- reporting [8]. …”