Psychological evaluation of healthy sleep

In recent years a new approach to sleep research has been conducted focusing on sleep parameters that contribute to health instead of contemplating sleep disorders and disease. The aim of our study was to explore which subjective sleep parameters support the individual perception of having a good sleep. An Healthy Sleep Questionnaire (HSQ) was developed based on 10 items: sleep satisfaction, sleep quality, calmness of sleep, depth of sleep, continuous sleep during the night (without awakenings), feeling recovered/rested after waking up, bedtime and wake up time regularity and easiness of falling asleep. A group of employees with regular working hours completed a set of questionnaires about sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle behaviours, sleep, personality, mood and well-being. HSQ reliability analyses revealed four items that contributed to its internal validity (α = .945): sleep satisfaction, sleep quality, calmness of sleep and deep sleep. HSQ was positively associated with well-being, vigour-activity and negatively associated with ICSD-3-TR and DSM-5-TR insomnia symptoms, tension-anxiety, depression-dejection, anger-hostility, fatigue-inertia, neuroticism and arousability predisposition. Normal sleepers revealed higher HSQ scores than individuals with Insomnia symptoms or Insomnia. HSQ showed good psychometric properties and might be a valid, useful and easy tool to routinely evaluate healthy sleep in research and clinical practice.