Researchers from the University of Rochester recently designed and assessed a novel measurement tool to evaluate children’s sleep environments. Children’s sleep environments have been shown to strongly predict their sleep and sleep-related behaviour, however no measure has ever been developed and evaluated for this purpose.
They performed a cross-sectional study, which consisted on an online survey for parents of children aged between 5 & 18 years in the United States, 840 participants were involved in the study.
They titled the measurement tool: The Children’s and Adolescents’ Sleep Environment Scale
There are 13 items in the scale, grouped into 3 factors:
- general environmental hazards (7 items),
- availability of bedding materials (2 items), and
- presence of electronics (4 items).
The full scale and its subscales showed strong discriminant validity, and analyses suggested that it is generalisable across diverse demographic groups. After controlling for children’s sleep hygiene, sleep disturbances, behavioural problems and family functioning, the full-scale Children’s and Adolescents’ Sleep Environment Scale significantly predicted children’s sleepiness. The general environmental hazards and presence of electronics subscales also predicted children’s sleepiness in a separate regression analysis.
They concluded that The Children’s and Adolescents’ Sleep Environment Scale shows strong psychometric properties and has emerged as both a reliable and valid indicator of children’s and adolescents’ sleep environments and their potential impact on children’s sleep and sleep-related behaviour.
CITATION: Peltz JS, Rogge RD, Elmore-Staton L, Spilsbury J, Buckhalt JA. The development of a scale to assess children’s and adolescents’ sleep environments. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(10):2353–2365.
