Adherence
Self-reported sleep duration and quality using brief epidemiological questionnaires (1-3 items) show poor agreement with objective actigraphy measures, rendering them invalid for assessing sleep as a precise risk factor in large-scale studies.
If you are tracking your sleep for health decisions, do not rely solely on how you feel or a simple 'how many hours' question. These self-reports are often inaccurate. If precise sleep data is critical for your health management, consider using an objective tracking method like actigraphy, as subjective reports can significantly misrepresent actual sleep duration and quality.
Our results indicate that sleep questions typically used in epidemiologic studies do not closely correspond with objective measures of sleep as assessed using actigraphy.
Why this rating
Validated against actigraphy (a recognized objective measure) in a reasonably sized sample (n=56), though limited by small sample size and lack of male participants.
Source
Validation of Self-Reported Sleep Against Actigraphy
Jennifer Girschik et al. · Journal of Epidemiology · 2012
DOI 10.2188/jea.je20120012
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