The Epworth Sleepiness Scale is the questionnaire most commonly used in research for quantifying how sleepy a person is during the day.
From the official website:
“The ESS is a self-administered questionnaire with 8 questions. It provides a measure of a person’s general level of daytime sleepiness or their average sleep propensity in daily life. It has become the world standard method for making this assessment.
The ESS asks people to rate, on a 4-point scale (0 – 3), their usual chances of dozing off or falling asleep in 8 different situations or activities that most people engage in as part of their daily lives, although not necessarily every day. It does not ask people how often they doze off in each situation. That would depend very much on how often they happened to be in those situations. Rather it asks what the chances are that they would doze off whenever they were in each situation. This requires a mental judgment which, it seems, most people are able to make in a meaningful way. The total ESS score is the sum of 8 item-scores and can range between 0 and 24. The higher the score, the higher the person’s level of daytime sleepiness. Most people can answer the ESS, without assistance, in 2 or 3 minutes.
The total ESS score provides an estimate of a general characteristic of each person – their average level of sleepiness in daily life. This can be influenced by many factors, and the ESS does not distinguish which factor(s) have caused any particular level of daytime sleepiness. It is not a diagnostic tool in itself, but is a very useful tool for measuring one important aspect of a person’s sleep-wake health status.”
Epworth Sleepiness Scale (link to its official site)
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References
Johns MW. A new method for measuring daytime sleepiness: the Epworth sleepiness scale. Sleep. 1991 Dec;14(6):540-5. PubMed PMID: 1798888. (Original publication of the scale. For modification, see 1997 paper)
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