Discrepancies between Objective and Subjective Sleep Assessment in Older Adults

Abstract

Older adults are a growing segment of the population who experience disturbed sleep. In using actigraphy and self-report (e.g., sleep diaries) to measure/characterize sleep in this population, researchers have found that there is a discrepancy between these two measurement tools. Studies have found that this discrepancy is impacted by individual characteristics. The first aim of the current study was to determine the degree of congruency or differences between actigraphy and diary estimates of time spent trying to fall asleep and total time spent asleep. The second aim was to determine how individual differences in sleep quality, depressive and anxious symptoms, and memory would be associated with the difference between actigraphy and sleep diary estimates of sleep. The last aim was to determine whether the effect of sleep disturbance, depression, or anxiety on the discrepancy between the two measures was dependent on age. Our results demonstrated that participants perceived taking longer to fall asleep and sleeping more than what was indicated from an objective measure of their sleep. We found that worse sleep quality predicted a greater incongruence between self-reported and actigraphy estimated sleep onset latency. Future studies should continue to investigate how psychological and physiological functioning and processes impacts the discrepancy between self-reported and actigraphy estimated sleep in older adults and explore the longitudinal pattern of this discrepancy.