Faculty Articles

How Many Nights Are Enough? The Short-Term Stability Of Sleep Parameters In Elderly Insomniacs And Normal Sleepers

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-1999

Publication Title

Psychophysiology

Volume

36

Issue/Number

2

First Page

233

ISSN

0048-5772

Last Page

244

Abstract/Excerpt

Temporal stability is an important fundamental quality when measuring sleep parameters, yet it has been infrequently assessed. Generalizability theory was used to estimate the short-term temporal stability of five variables commonly used to characterize insomnia: sleep onset latency, total sleep time, wake after sleep onset, time in bed, and sleep efficiency. Estimates were calculated for 32 elderly primary insomniacs and 32 elderly normal sleepers, both in the lab and at home, using both sleep logs and polysomnography (PSG). A week of recording using either PSG or sleep logs was typically sufficient to achieve adequate stability (defined as G coefficient of at least 0.80) with some notable exceptions: (a) when using log-derived measures with insomniacs, a 3-week average was necessary for wake after sleep onset and (b) more than a 2-week average was necessary for sleep onset latency. Because of the substantial commitment involved in the physiological recording of sleep, alternative forms of aggregation are considered with the intent of improving temporal stability.

DOI

10.1111/1469-8986.3620233

Peer Reviewed

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