The Development and Psychometric Properties of the Children's Sleep Assessment Questionnaire in Taiwan.

To develop and examine the validity and reliability of the Children's Sleep Assessment Questionnaire (CSAQ) for school-aged children in Taiwan.

DESIGN AND METHODS: We used a cross-sectional study design with stratified random sampling. Pairs of children and parents were recruited from a school-based sample of third- and fourth-grade students, enrolling 362 child and parent pairs. The content validity, construct validity, convergent validity, internal consistency, and inter-rater reliability of the CSAQ were assessed.

RESULTS: The CSAQ comprised three parts: sleep hygiene, sleep quality, and sleep disturbance. Sleep hygiene showed a moderate intra-class correlation coefficient (0.37-0.66) between children and parents. Results of exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor structure model for sleep quality with 64.9% of variance and a two-factor structure for sleep disturbance with 57.7% of variance. These two models also demonstrated good fit with the confirmatory factor analysis.

CONCLUSIONS: The CSAQ is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing sleep problems in school-aged children.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Both clinicians and researchers can use the CSAQ to screen or elucidate the children' sleep problems.