The Cleveland adolescent sleepiness questionnaire: a new measure to assess excessive daytime sleepiness in adolescents.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Developed the Cleveland Adolescent Sleepiness Questionnaire (CASQ), a brief, self-completed instrument to measure excessive daytime sleepiness in adolescents. DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis. PARTICIPANTS A subsample of 411 adolescents 11-17 years of age recruited from area schools, churches, and "control" participants in a sleep disordered breathing cohort study; a second subsample of 62 adolescents with diagnosed sleep disordered breathing also participating in the sleep disordered breathing study. MEASUREMENTS Participants completed the CASQ along with two other available measures of daytime sleepiness and other sleep parameters (sleep duration on school nights, sleep duration on non-school nights, and sleep debt, defined as non-school night sleep duration minus school-night sleep duration). Demographic information was obtained from a caregiver-completed questionnaire. The CASQ was developed using exploratory factor analysis, followed by confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling techniques. RESULTS Goodness-of-fit measures for the final 16-item scale structure ranged from good to excellent. The CASQ's internal consistency was good (alpha = 0.89). Correlations between the CASQ, two other measures of daytime sleepiness, and sleep parameters gave preliminary evidence of the CASQ's construct validity. CONCLUSION The CASQ shows promise as a valid measure of daytime sleepiness in adolescents.