Questionnaires that screen for multiple sleep disorders

Abstract

The goal of this review was to identify, describe, and evaluate the existing multiple sleep disorders screening questionnaires for their comprehensiveness, brevity, and psychometric quality. A systematic review was conducted using Medline/PubMed, cumulative index to nursing & allied health literature, health and psychosocial instruments and the "grey literature". Search terms were "sleep disorders, screening, questionnaires, and psychometrics". The scope of the search was limited to English language articles for adult age groups from 1989 through 2015. Of the n = 2812 articles identified, most were assessment or treatment guideline reviews, topical reviews, and/or empirical articles. Seven of the articles described multiple sleep disorders screening instruments. Of the identified instruments, two questionnaires (the Holland sleep Disorders questionnaire and sleep-50) were evaluated as comprehensive and one questionnaire (the global sleep assessment questionnaire [GSAQ]) was judged to be both comprehensive and efficient. The GSAQ was found to cover four of the six core intrinsic disorders, sleep insufficiency, and daytime sequela with 11 questions. Accordingly, the GSAQ is the most suitable for application as a general sleep disorders screener. Additional work is required to validate this instrument in the context of primary care. Finally, the future development of multiple sleep disorders screening questionnaires should not only cover all six intrinsic sleep disorders but also acquire some basic demographic information (age, sex, body mass index, presence/absence of bed partner, work status and shift) and some limited data regarding sleep sufficiency and the daytime consequences of sleep disturbance.

Keywords: Adults; Diagnosis; Primary care physicians; Screening; Sleep disorders.

Figure 1:

Sleep disorders screening questionnaire literature search data extraction –candidates for additional appraisal of practice related features and psychometric qualities KEY : “Excluded” means less than three sleep disorders covered by tool OR tool not patient self-report numerically scorablequestionnaire OR if designed for individuals with specific comorbidity OR if population not community-dwelling OR if population not adult. Articles were counted according to the number of tools on which they reported (e.g., a reference that reported on three screening tools was tabulated as 3 “articles”. Grey literature sources were identified via Google Scholar, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention& American Academy of Sleep Medicine.