Department of Psychology and Centre on Aging and Health, University of Regina, Regina, Canada.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada.
PLoS One. 2023 Feb 2;18(2):e0281364. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281364. eCollection 2023.
Unhelpful beliefs about sleep have been shown to exacerbate distress associated with sleep-related difficulties. University students are particularly vulnerable to experiencing sleep-related problems. The Dysfunctional Beliefs and Attitudes about Sleep-16 (DBAS-16) scale is a widely used instrument that assesses for sleep-disruptive cognitions. Although psychometric support for the DBAS-16 is available, Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis is needed to examine its properties at the item level. Psychometric investigation in non-clinical samples can help identify people who may be at risk for developing sleep problems. We examined the DBAS-16 using IRT on a sample of 759 university students. Our results identified items and subscales that adequately/inadequately differentiated between students who held unhelpful beliefs about sleep and those who did not. The DBAS-16 is a valuable instrument to assess unhelpful beliefs about sleep. We outline recommendations to improve the discriminatory ability of the instrument. Future investigations should establish cross-validation with a clinical sample.
关于睡眠的无益信念已被证明会加剧与睡眠相关困难相关的困扰。大学生特别容易出现与睡眠相关的问题。睡眠失调信念和态度量表-16（DBAS-16）是一种广泛使用的评估睡眠障碍认知的工具。尽管 DBAS-16 的心理测量支持可用，但需要使用项目反应理论（IRT）分析来检查其项目水平的特性。在非临床样本中的心理测量研究可以帮助确定可能有睡眠问题风险的人。我们使用IRT 在 759 名大学生样本上对 DBAS-16 进行了检验。我们的结果确定了项目和分量表，这些项目和分量表能够充分/不足地区分那些对睡眠持有无益信念的学生和那些没有持有无益信念的学生。DBAS-16 是评估睡眠无益信念的有价值的工具。我们概述了改进该工具区分能力的建议。未来的研究应与临床样本进行交叉验证。
