The New Scale for Measuring an Unhealthy Obsession With Sleep

Until now, researchers studying orthosomnia had to borrow existing insomnia questionnaires that weren't actually designed to capture it. This study set out to build a dedicated measurement tool from scratch: sleep experts first reviewed an initial pool of candidate items, then the refined set was tested on 994 adults, average age 42, using statistical techniques to identify which items genuinely clustered together. Two distinct factors emerged: 'interference', how much sleep-related worry disrupts daily functioning, and 'rigidity', a perfectionistic, inflexible mindset about achieving ideal sleep. Notably, the rigidity factor was positively associated with the personality trait conscientiousness, suggesting orthosomnia may take firmer hold in people whose disposition already leans toward high standards and self-discipline.

As a newly developed scale, it needs further testing in different populations before its long-term reliability is fully established, and validating a questionnaire is a different task from proving what causes the condition it measures. Its value is practical: having two distinct, named components, how much it disrupts your life versus how rigidly you're pursuing perfection, gives both researchers and individuals a clearer way to recognise the pattern in themselves, rather than a vague sense that caring about sleep has become an unhealthy fixation.