Browse, sleep, caffeine, repeat
We all know the drill: turn the lights off, hop into bed, shut your ey-, I mean, grab your phone. Cell phones are probably one of the most agreed upon distractors from a goodnight’s rest, yet most us have them charging within arms reach once we hit the sack, an all too tempting location to reach over and scroll through Reddit before actually trying to sleep.
There’s no doubt to most that getting enough sleep is important for both mental and physical health. We have all been victims to a night of too little sleep, becoming slaves to caffeine the next morning just to get through the day. Often, this lack of sleep can be attributed to our own behaviours — such as late night scrolling, or a late night cup of coffee. Facebook before bed is just one example of a sleep hygiene behaviour that disrupts sleep latency and efficiency, with media use being one of the biggest distractors before bedtime (5). It has been observed that sleep hygiene is a critical predictor of sleep quality (4). Thinking about the amount of time I spend looking at my computer or cell phone before going to bed, I wondered how dysfunctional sleep hygiene behaviours had an impact on sleep-related measures.
Many questions then popped into my head: Would behaviours such as caffeine before bed, or watching TV in bed change outcomes when measuring sleep efficiency? Would these changes be reflected in self-report inventories? If I were to fill out a questionnaire about my sleep habits, would I underestimate the amount of time I spend on electronics before bed? Would I underestimate the impact it must have on my ability to fall asleep? Would I overestimate other factors that I think better explain this pattern?
Many self-report measures of sleep habits and sleep efficiency exist. Questionnaires including sleep logs that include reported bedtime and wake time provide information about sleep duration. The School Sleep Habits Survey, for example, is to be filled out by school-aged adolescents. It has questions pertaining to bedtime, reasons for waking up, attitudes about sleep, mood, and other variants in order to determine the individual’s chronotype. Interestingly, with sleep, self-report can reliably be compared to objective measures of sleep duration, efficiency and quality (such as data recorded by an actiwatch). This makes sleep questionnaires an interesting area in psychometrics, as it is much more easily observable than other behaviours. This provides an opportunity to compare measurements, and make a claim for the test’s validity. The School Sleep Habits Survey has been found to be highly valid, having established concurring results between objective actigraph data and self-report (1).
Additionally, measurement of sleep hygiene has been established through questionnaires such as the Sleep Hygiene Index. With 13 items, it is a quick form that assesses behaviours and factors that have a causal link to sleep hygiene. Reliability has been established through test-retest methods and Cronbach’s alpha. Analyses with sleep quality and sleepiness questionnaires (as the ones discussed above) have shown that maladaptive sleep hygiene is associated with lower quality sleep (2). And really, can you tell me the last time you slept well after drinking a cup of coffee an hour before you got into bed? We all know it doesn’t happen.
It’s also known that people tend to underestimate the frequency (or amount of time spent doing) certain behaviours — such as how much time they spend on their cellphones, which is undoubtedly one of the most common maladaptive sleep hygiene behaviours (3). Due to this, it could be interesting to look at whether sleep hygiene acts as a moderator in the correlation between objective and subjective sleep-related measures. If people tend to underestimate the time they spend on electronics, their self-report responses regarding sleep latency might not be as accurate, and thus a change in the correlation between self-report and objective measures due to a specific sleep hygiene behaviour would be observed. Even in measures where a high correlation has been confirmed, such as the School Sleep Habits Survey discussed above, the nature of sleep hygiene may lead to individual differences in the reliability between objective and subjective accounts. For example, students with healthier sleep hygiene habits may have a stronger correlation between both measures, whereas students with unhealthy sleep hygiene behaviours — who most likely also tend to underestimate the frequency of these behaviours, may be victims to lower reliability.
These are questions that could be explored with further research looking at moderators and mediators of reported sleep quality. What we do know, though, is that the data are definitive: steer clear of your cell phone if you want a good nights sleep. But you probably aren’t going to do that, are you?
ID: 260577495
References
(1) Wolfson, A. R., Carskadon, M. A., Acebo, C., Seifer, R., Fallone, G., Labyak, S. E., & Martin, J. L. (2003). Evidence for the validity of a sleep habits survey for adolescents. Sleep-New York Then Westchester-, 26(2), 213–217.
(2) Mastin, D. G., Bryson, J., & Corwyn, R. (2006). Assessment of sleep hygiene using the Sleep Hygiene Index. Journal of behavioral medicine, 29(3), 223–227.
(3) Deuze, M. (2013). Media Work. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
(4) LeBourgeois, M. K., Giannotti, F., Cortesi, F., Wolfson, A. R., & Harsh, J. (2005). The relationship between reported sleep quality and sleep hygiene in Italian and American adolescents. Pediatrics, 115(Supplement 1), 257–265.
(5) Van den Bulck, J. (2004). Television viewing, computer game playing, and Internet use and self-reported time to bed and time out of bed in secondary-school children. SLEEP-NEW YORK THEN WESTCHESTER-, 27(1), 101–104.
