Table 3.

—Main Advantages and Disadvantages of Actigraphy vs Other Sleep Assessment Methods

Sleep Assessment Method	Main Advantages	Main Disadvantages
Sleep questionnaires	Brief, easily administered in conjunction with clinical interview Low patient burden	Subject to recall biases Limited usefulness in patients who are unable to self-report reliably (eg, young children, dementia patients)
		Limited validity compared with PSG
Sleep diary	Provides documentation of daily variability	Patient burden higher than questionnaires; requires patient to complete diary each day for maximum validity
	Documents habits in the home sleep environment	Influenced by patient’s expectations about sleep
	Less recall bias than questionnaires because information is recorded daily
Actigraphy	Provides objective information about daily variability and sleep quality	Limited usefulness in assessment of SOL
	Records information in the home sleep environment	Higher cost than sleep diaries
	Not influenced by patient expectations, recall bias, or memory impairments	Patients should complete sleep diaries concurrently to enhance quality of information
	Lower cost than PSG
Laboratory PSG	“Gold standard” objective assessment of sleep	High participant burden
		High cost
		Does not provide information on sleep habits at home
		Can lead to a “first night effect” phenomenon

See Table 1 legend for expansion of abbreviations.