Parent and twin actigraphy sleep were measured using the
Micro Motion Logger Watch, a wrist-based accelerometer worn on participants’ non-dominant wrists (Ambulatory Monitoring, Inc. Ardsley, NY USA). Activity was measured in 1-minute epochs using a zero-crossing mode; periods of sleep and waking were detected using the Sadeh algorithm in Action W-2 (Version 2.7.1; Ambulatory Monitoring). Actigraphy has been validated against polysomnography
23 (link) and demonstrates good reliability when assessed 4–5 nights or more.
24 (link) Four sleep parameters were examined in the present study: (1) sleep duration (i.e., total time asleep (in hours), excluding waking episodes), (2) sleep efficiency (i.e., ratio of time spent asleep (duration) to total time in bed, with total time in bed consisting of true sleep and waking episodes), (3) sleep midpoint (i.e., midpoint between sleep onset and offset), (4) sleep latency (i.e., number of minutes to sleep onset from first attempting to fall asleep).
Compliance was high, of twins who participated in actigraphy (
n = 612), 42 (6.9%) children had watches that malfunctioned upon data download, 5 (0.8%) watches were lost, 44 (7.2%) had insufficient data to analyze (0–2 nights of sleep) or decided opt out of the actigraphy portion of the study, and 1 (0.2%) participant wore the watch but was removed from analyses due to developmental disability that may affect sleep. Of the 516 children with valid actigraphy data, 76.0% (
n = 393) of children had 7 or more nights of data, 13.7% (
n=71) had 6 nights of data, 5.0% (
n = 26) had 5 nights of data, 2.7% (
n = 14) had 4 nights of data, and 2.5% (
n = 13) had 3 nights of data. Of the primary caregivers who participated in actigraphy (
n = 290), 24 (8.2%) had watches that malfunctioned upon download, 20 (6.9%) had less than 3 nights of sleep or did not wear the watch, and 1 had a watch that was lost (0.3%). Of the 245 primary caregivers with 3 or more nights of actigraphy data, 76.7% (
n = 188) had 7 or more nights of data, 14.3% (
n = 35) had 6 nights, 5.7% (
n = 14) had 5 nights, 2.9% (
n = 7) had 4 nights, and 0.4% (
n = 1) had 3 nights of data. The valid actigraphy data used in the current study came from 287 different families. Of these, 71.8% (
N = 206) had data from all three family members (i.e., both twins and primary caregiver), 21.6% (
N = 62) had sleep data from two family members (
n = 28 had data for both twins but not the primary caregiver,
n = 34 had data for the primary caregiver and one twin), and 6.6% (
N = 19) had sleep data from one family member (
n = 14 had data for one twin,
n = 5 had data for primary caregiver).
Cao J., Ihee H, & Zewail A.H. (1999). Ultrafast electron diffraction and direct observation of transient structures in a chemical reaction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 96(2), 338-342.