Detecting Sleep Disruptions in Adolescents Using Context-sensitive Ecological Momentary Assessment: A Feasibility Study

Adolescents are recommended to sleep at least 8–10 h per day. Inadequate sleep in adolescents is detrimental to their overall wellbeing and is linked to poor academic performance. Identifying causes of poor sleep in the sleep environment can help researchers and adolescents determine what changes need to be made to improve sleep quality. However, in-situ sleep monitoring is challenging because measurements cannot interfere with sleep, and people are poor at remembering what happens during the night. We report on the feasibility testing of an in-situ sleep monitoring application that uses passive sensing to drive context-sensitive ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) to help participants recall sleep disruptions when they wake up in the morning. Participants answered over 80% of EMAs delivered during the feasibility study and could recall meaningful reasons for over 40% of noise and motion events when they answered context-sensitive questions presented in the morning EMA. We discuss some challenges and future opportunities in sleep disruption detection.