A Comparison of Sleep Duration Accuracy Between Questionnaire and Accelerometer in Middle Childhood

Kanae Kanda; Tomohiro Hirao; Nlandu R Ngatu; Akitsu Murakami; Yusuke Yamadori; Katsunori Yokoyama; Yoichi Hoshikawa; Tetsuo Minamino

doi:10.7759/cureus.47236

A Comparison of Sleep Duration Accuracy Between Questionnaire and Accelerometer in Middle Childhood

Cureus. 2023 Oct 17;15(10):e47236. doi: 10.7759/cureus.47236. eCollection 2023 Oct.

Authors

Kanae Kanda¹, Tomohiro Hirao¹, Nlandu R Ngatu¹, Akitsu Murakami², Yusuke Yamadori³, Katsunori Yokoyama⁴, Yoichi Hoshikawa⁵, Tetsuo Minamino⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Miki, JPN.
² Department of Palliative Care, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Miki, JPN.
³ Department of Anesthesiology, Takamatsu Red Cross Hospital, Takamatsu, JPN.
⁴ Department of Health and Welfare, Kagawa Prefecture Tosan Health and Welfare Office, Takamatsu, JPN.
⁵ Department of Health and Welfare, Kagawa Prefectural Government Office, Takamatsu, JPN.
⁶ Department of Cardiorenal and Cerebrovascular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Miki, JPN.

Abstract

Purpose Healthy sleep is vital to children's well-being, and assessing sleep efficiently and accurately can help understand children's lifestyles. Due to the difficulty in objectively measuring sleep duration using wearable sensors in large-scale surveys of children, self-administered questionnaires are often used in Japan; however, their accuracy is uncertain. We evaluated and compared the accuracy of questionnaire-based sleep times to those of wearable sensors. Methods This observational study was conducted between November 2019 and January 2020. A self-administered questionnaire on lifestyle habits and ActiGraph GT3X+ (ActiGraph, Inc., Pensacola, USA) accelerometer data were collected from 40 fourth-grade elementary school students in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. We analyzed measurements for 256 days out of 280 days (40 persons × 7 days) after excluding days when the rate of wearing the accelerometer was < 90%. Results The median sleep duration per accelerometry was 453 minutes, and the median time in bed was 519 minutes. Questionnaire-based time in bed was 11 minutes longer, with relatively high inter-individual variability. The difference in bedtime was 26 minutes earlier, and wake-up time was 12 minutes earlier for the questionnaire. The average sleep efficiency was 87.4%, and one-third of the children had sleep efficiency < 85%. Conclusion The difference in sleep duration by questionnaire compared to accelerometry was approximately 10 minutes, suggesting the questionnaire may determine sleep duration with accuracy.

Keywords: accelerometer; children; middle childhood; physical activity; questionnaire; sleep duration.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), initials of the authors who received each award; Tetsuo Minamino, grant number; 20gk0110048h0002. https://www.amed.go.jp/en/index.html. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.