Sleep Hygiene Index
What It Measures
The Sleep Hygiene Index asks about the habits around sleep rather than sleep itself. Not how well someone slept, but whether they nap during the day, go to bed at different times, use the bed for things other than sleeping, exercise close to bedtime, or lie there worrying about not sleeping.
Thirteen behaviours are each rated for how often the person does them, from never to always. The items were drawn from the diagnostic features of inadequate sleep hygiene in the international sleep disorder classification, so each one maps onto a recognised contributor. Summing them gives a global score, and a higher score means more of the behaviours that work against sleep.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Notes: The instrument is reproduced widely in academic and clinical resources without a posted fee.
Learn More: Two limits worth knowing. Internal consistency is modest — the developers reported Cronbach's alpha of .66, and independent studies have found similar figures. That is expected in a behavioural checklist where the items are not meant to measure one underlying trait, but it means the total is a summary of habits rather than a psychometric construct. And there are no published cut-points.
