Development of pediatric sleep questionnaires as diagnostic or epidemiological tools: A brief review of Dos and Don’ts

SummaryQuestionnaires are a useful and extensively used tool in clinical sleep medicine and in sleep research. The number of sleep questionnaires targeting the pediatric age range has tremendously increased in recent years, and with such explosion in the number of instruments, their heterogeneity has become all the more apparent. Here, we explore the theoretical and pragmatic processes required for instrument design and development, i.e., how any questionnaire, inventory, log, or diary should be created and evaluated, and also provide illustrative examples to further underline the potential pitfalls that are inherently embedded in every step of tool development.