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Insomnia symptoms in children and adolescents: screening for sleep problems with the two-item Sleep Condition Indicator (SCI-02)

G. Illingworth, Karen L. Mansfield, Simona Skripkauskaite, M. Fazel, F. Waite

BMC Public Health, 2024

29,304 participants · 2 citations

Abstract

Sleep problems are common in young people. Yet brief screening measures to identify those most in need of an intervention are lacking. This study investigated the potential of the two-item Sleep Condition Indicator (SCI-02) for screening insomnia symptoms in children and adolescents. We sought to establish whether there are distinct subgroups with different sleep profiles and whether subgroup membership varied with gender and school year group. Students (school years 5–13; typical age 9–18 years) in England completed the OxWell Student Survey in 2021. Sleep measures included: SCI-02, sleep onset latency (SOL), sleep duration, daytime sleepiness, and worry disrupting sleep. Latent profile analysis and multinomial logistic regression explored sleep profiles and predicted class membership. In total, 29,304 participants answered sleep items. Of these, 95% provided binary gender (n = 27,802, 55% female) for analyses. Five sleep profiles emerged. The profiles, labelled “good”, “moderate”, or “poor” sleepers, vary by sleep quality – which includes time taken to fall asleep (SOL), amount of sleep (sleep duration), and the disruption of sleep due to worry. The profiles are then further differentiated by high levels of daytime sleepiness – labelled “sleepy”. “Good Sleepers” (18,355, 66%), “Moderate Sleepers” (4825, 17.4%), “Moderate Sleepy Sleepers” (1250, 4.5%), “Poor Sleepers” (1037, 3.7%) and “Poor Sleepy Sleepers” (2335, 8.4%). Probable insomnia rates (SCI-02 ≤ 2) were high in…

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