The Reliability of a New Sleep Screening Questionnaire for Large Population-Based Studies: The Third Nord-Tr?ndelag Health Study

摘要

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the reliability of a new sleep questionnaire (sHUNT-Q) used inthe Nord Tr?ndelag Health Study 3 (HUNT 3) performed between 2006 and 2008. Six of nine items were modified from aNorwegian version of the Karolinska Sleep questionnaire (KSQ). Overall, 50,839 (54%) out of 94,194 invited participatedin HUNT 3. In a randomly selected group of participants, 297 (53%) out of 563 invited persons attended an interview byneurologists. The reliability of the sleep related questions was evaluated with Cohen′s kappa by blindly comparing the answersin the questionnaire with those from the semi-structured interview. Summary measure scores were calculated bysumming the responses of the six modified KSQ questions, the three insomnia-related questions, and the two questions relatedto respiratory disturbance during sleep. Agreement was calculated for dichotomized sum-score indexes based on75% and 50% percentile cut-offs. Kappa values for the individual questions ranged from 0.35 to 0.52 in 3 x 3 tables whilekappa for summary indexes in 2x2 tables ranged from 0.47 to 0.62. The best agreement between the interview and thequestionnaire was found for respiratory disturbance defined as a summary measure score ≥ 50 percentile (kappa value0.62, 95% CI 0.51-0.74). Reliability did not depend on the time between the HUNT questionnaire and the interview. TheKSQ-based summary measure scores from the new sHUNT-Q sleep screening questionnaire may become a useful tool inepidemiological studies for identifying individuals with a persistent sleep disturbance.