Estimating sleep patterns with activity monitoring in children and adolescents: how many nights are necessary for reliable measures?
OBJECTIVE
This study provides estimates of reliability for aggregated values from 1 to 7 recording nights for five commonly used actigraphic measures of sleep patterns, reliability as a function of night type (weeknight or weekend night), and stability of measures over several months.


METHODS
Data are from three studies that obtained 7 nights of actigraph data (using Mini Motionlogger actigraphs and associated validated algorithms [ASA]) on children and adolescents living at home on self-selected sleep-wake schedules.


METHODS
Participants were 169 children aged 12-60 months, and 55 adolescents aged 11-16 years.


RESULTS
Up to 28% of weekly recordings may be unacceptable for analysis in young participants because of illness, technical problems, and participant noncompliance; studies aiming to collect 5 nights of actigraph data should record for at least 1 full week. Reliability estimates for values aggregated over any 5 nights were adequate (> or = .70) for sleep start time, wake minutes, and sleep efficiency. Measures of sleep minutes and sleep period were less reliable and may require 7 or more nights for estimates of stable individual differences. Reliability for 1- or 2-night aggregates were poor for all measures. We found significant and high correlations between summer and fall session measures for all five variables when weekend nights were included.


CONCLUSIONS
Five or more nights of usable recordings are required to obtain reliable actigraph measures of sleep for children and adolescents.
Acebo
C
C
Sleep and Chronobiology Research Laboratory, E.P. Bradley Hospital/Brown University School of Medicine, E. Providence, RI 02915, USA. ChristinevAcebo@Brown.edu
Sadeh
A
A
Seifer
R
R
Tzischinsky
O
O
Wolfson
A R
AR
Hafer
A
A
Carskadon
M A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002940:Circadian Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology