Preliminary Validation of the Sleep and Concussion Questionnaire as an Outcome Measure for Sleep Following Brain Injury.

BACKGROUND: Sleep and wakefulness disturbances are common with traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, there are no condition-specific measures to evaluate sleep following TBI.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the convergent validity of the Sleep and Concussion Questionnaire (SCQ), a condition-specific (TBI) measure is compared to polysomnography and existing self-report sleep questionnaires.

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDED: Thirty-two adults diagnosed with mild TBI, 3-24 months post-injury, average age, 38.9 years, predominantly female (63%) and with symptoms of chronic insomnia.

METHODS: Participants underwent polysomnographic evaluation of sleep and completed the SCQ, Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), and the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS). Correlations were assessed using Pearson's correlations. The sample was sufficiently powered (0.85) to detect a moderate to strong correlation of 0.5 or greater.

RESULTS: SCQ sub-questions were meaningfully correlated with corresponding objective sleep parameters (time awake, number of awakenings, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, wake after sleep onset) as measured with polysomnography. Additional significant correlations were seen between total scores on the SCQ and ISI and between SCQ sub questions and total ESS scores.

CONCLUSIONS: This work provides initial evidence of the convergent validity of the SCQ with objective sleep parameters and existing self-report measures in patients after mild TBI.