Week 4: Factors in assessment of sleep quality, and progress in research paper

Welcome to the fifth post for this project. In the previous post, I explained my analysis of the scientific paper “Monitoring and Improving Personalized Sleep Quality from Long-Term Lifelogs” by Wenbin Gan, Minh-Son Dao, and Koji Zettsu. I connected the content discussed in that paper to the methodology of my project, and I elaborated on my methodology and changes that have been made. In this post, I will discuss the progress being made in my methodology as well as progress that I have made in writing the research paper. 

Before I delve into the current progress, I will first talk about a paper I have read titled “Sleep Health at the Genomic Level: Six Distinct Factors and Their Relationships with Psychopathology” by Claire L Morrison and others. This paper discusses the correlation between low sleep quality and prevalence of mental health disorders. The authors of this paper propose the Sleep Health Index, a model to assess sleep quality according to six factors:

•  sleep efficiency 
  • measures time spent sleeping during the time spent in bed.
• circadian preference
  • someone’s natural tendency to sleep at a certain time of day.
•  sleep alertness
  • how well-rested someone feels after waking up from their sleep. 
•  sleep duration
  •  the total amount of time someone spends sleeping.
•  non-insomnia sleep time
  •  how much time was spent sleeping other than time spent battling insomnia (difficulty falling/staying asleep).
•  sleep regularity
  • the consistency of someone’s sleep patterns.

These 6 factors, the authors argue, allow for a much more comprehensive assessment of someone’s sleep rather than simply referring to the amount of time one spends sleeping. 

I will now relate this model to the Sleep Quality Scale, a sleep scale developed by Hyergeon Yi, Kyungrim Shin, and Chol Shin. The SQS is a questionnaire that assesses an individual’s sleep quality according to the following six domains of sleep quality: daytime symptoms, restoration after sleep, problems initiating and maintaining sleep, difficulty waking, and sleep satisfaction. The SQS’s 6 domains of sleep quality cover a total of 28 questions, each of which can be connected to one of the 6 factors of sleep discussed in Morrison’s paper. I am currently in the midst of talking with the authors regarding the usage of SQS in this project. 

I have designed a questionnaire, as I already mentioned in the previous post, which contains questions that fall under the six factors described in the SQS. This questionnaire is to be used if I am unable to use the SQS in this project. I additionally have written an introduction that will be incorporated in the final research paper. This introduction consists of a description and overview of light pollution, an overview of sleep, and brief statements describing the relationship that exposure to artificial light can have on sleep quality. As I have already located some subjects to answer the questionnaire for this project, I will continue to find more subjects. I will also continue to be in touch with the authors of SQS and soon will finalize the questionnaire to be delivered in this methodology. Thank you for reading this post.