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Sleep Duration

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Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine

Synonyms

Total sleep time

Definition

Sleep duration typically refers to the total amount of sleep obtained, either during the nocturnal sleep episode or across the 24-h period.

Description

Measurement

Sleep duration can be measured via questionnaire, diary, actigraphy, or polysomnography. In population-based epidemiologic studies, single-item questionnaire or self-report measures of sleep duration have often been utilized (e.g., How many hours of sleep do you obtain on a typical night?). In clinical and research settings, sleep diaries, actigraphy, and polysomnography provide assessments of sleep duration. Sleep diaries involve the subjective report of sleep duration, typically daily for a minimum of 1 week. Actigraphy provides an objective estimate of sleep/wake status from the detection of bodily movement, whereas polysomnography measures sleep duration through the assessment of multiple physiological signals, including brain, eye, and muscle activity. Although typically correlated,...

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Correspondence to Christopher Kline .

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media, New York

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Kline, C. (2013). Sleep Duration. In: Gellman, M.D., Turner, J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_846

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_846

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1004-2

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