Chapter 8: Assessment Tools to Evaluate Sleep in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

It is important to evaluate sleep in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) as sleep concerns are a common problem in this population. There are many methods for evaluating sleep complaints in children and adolescents including sleep questionnaires and sleep diaries (subjective measures) as well as actigraphy and polysomnography (objective measures). In the process of selecting which diagnostic assessment tool (or combination of tools) to use, there are several factors to be considered. These include factors such as patient and parent burden (time, cost, and/ or inconvenience), and patient compliance. Other factors include whether to study sleep in the subject’s natural sleep environment or to try and obtain a representative night of sleep to document the characteristics of sleep architecture in a sleep laboratory.