ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a range of assessment techniques for the measurement of sleep, the "gold-standard" polysomnographic approach, another widely used empirical and objective method, and more subjective, self-report, paper-based methods. The traditional, and gold-standard, method of assessing an individual's sleep is that of polysomnography (PSG). This method involves the placing of electrodes onto the test subject's scalp in order to measure the electrical activity of their brain, the so-called electroencephalograph, and other electrodes to record other physiological functions such as eye movements, cardiac activity, respiration rate and depth, and limb movements. An alternative, less invasive and very useable and useful method for measuring sleep is that of actigraphy, also known as actimetry, or ambulatory monitoring. Actigraphy utilises algorithms to "score" an individual as either awake or asleep based on their gross body movements. One major drawback of actigraphy is the lack of detailed physiological data on sleep stages, which inevitably limits its application especially in clinical settings.
