[Sleep self-report measures: a literature review].
OBJECTIVE
The widespread diffusion of sleep disorders (in particular, insomnia) in the general population and the presence of sleep complaints in many mental disorders and physical illnesses justifies an interest in their assessment and treatment, still today commonly underestimated. This study aims to describe the inexpensive and relatively easy-to-use self-report measures of sleep available in literature.


METHODS
A literature search was conducted throughout the electronic literature database "Pubmed", selecting the pertinent articles published up to December 2006.


RESULTS
The recovered material takes the following fields into account: aspect of sleep measured, statistical population, structure, time frame, sub-scales and psychometric properties. International literature presents somewhat heterogeneous sleep self-evaluation tools, which mainly measure sleep quality and the specific causes of sleep interference. As for the Italian context, the recovered material is somewhat modest, taking into account the number of publications.


CONCLUSIONS
The critical points met in this review have led us to underline the characteristics of a hypothetical tool for sleep assessment to include in routine diagnoses.
Martoni
Monica
M
Servizio per la Valutazione e il Trattamento Comportamentale dei Disturbi del Sonno Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Bologna, Bologna. monica.martoni@unibo.it
Biagi
Manuela
M
D006801:Humans; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012893:Sleep Wake Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires