Department of Social Sciences, University of Houston - Downtown, Houston, TX, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Behav Sleep Med. 2024 Jul-Aug;22(4):540-552. doi: 10.1080/15402002.2024.2319835. Epub 2024 Feb 25.
The Disturbing Dream and Nightmare Severity Index (DDNSI) has been used widely in research and clinical practice without psychometric evidence supporting its use in clinical samples. The present study aimed to explore and confirm the factor structure of the DDNSI in an inpatient sample. We also sought to test the measure's construct validity.
Two samples of U.S. inpatients including adult ( = 937) and adolescent ( = 274) participants provided data on nightmares (i.e. DDNSI), sleep quality (i.e. the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index) and related psychopathology symptoms (e.g. depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety).
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found the six original items of the DDNSI to load onto a single latent factor.
The DDNSI was found to be a valid measure of nightmare frequency and distress, as it was significantly correlated with the items related to disturbing dreams, and the DDNSI was able to differentiate between nightmares and psychopathology symptoms. Though this research comes nearly two decades after the initial creation and use of the DDNSI, it provides a foundation for the scientific rigor of previous and future studies on nightmares using the DDNSI.
在缺乏支持其在临床样本中使用的心理计量学证据的情况下，《干扰性梦境和噩梦严重程度指数》（DDNSI）已被广泛应用于研究和临床实践。本研究旨在探索和确认住院患者样本中 DDNSI 的因素结构，并检验该测量工具的构念效度。
两个美国住院患者样本，包括成年（ = 937）和青少年（ = 274）参与者，提供了关于噩梦（即 DDNSI）、睡眠质量（即匹兹堡睡眠质量指数）和相关精神病理学症状（如抑郁、创伤后应激障碍、焦虑）的数据。
探索性和验证性因素分析发现，DDNSI 的六个原始项目可以加载到一个单一的潜在因素上。
DDNSI 被发现是一种有效的噩梦频率和困扰测量工具，因为它与与干扰性梦境相关的项目显著相关，并且 DDNSI 能够区分噩梦和精神病理学症状。尽管这项研究是在 DDNSI 最初创建和使用近二十年后进行的，但它为使用 DDNSI 对噩梦进行的先前和未来研究提供了科学严谨性的基础。
