Nonrestorative sleep refers to the experience of sleep as insufficiently refreshing, often despite the appearance of normal sleep according to objective parameters. As a result, a valid and reliable measure of the subjective experience of NRS is required in order to allow for standardization and comparability in its assessment. This thesis reports the results of a study involving the development and validation of a scale to assess NRS, the Nonrestorative Sleep Scale (NRSS). The psychometric properties of the NRSS were assessed in a group of 256 participants recruited from a sleep clinic population. Principal component analysis revealed four domains. The scale demonstrated good internal and test-retest reliability and reasonable validity compared to other measures. Overnight polysomnographic variables were also compared to scores on the scale and a few were found to be weakly correlated with scale scores. These included alpha EEG, sleep efficiency, and REM latency.

Nonrestorative sleep refers to the experience of sleep as insufficiently refreshing, often despite the appearance of normal sleep according to objective parameters. As a result, a valid and reliable measure of the subjective experience of NRS is required in order to allow for standardization and comparability in its assessment. This thesis reports the results of a study involving the development and validation of a scale to assess NRS, the Nonrestorative Sleep Scale (NRSS). The psychometric properties of the NRSS were assessed in a group of 256 participants recruited from a sleep clinic population. Principal component analysis revealed four domains. The scale demonstrated good internal and test-retest reliability and reasonable validity compared to other measures. Overnight polysomnographic variables were also compared to scores on the scale and a few were found to be weakly correlated with scale scores. These included alpha EEG, sleep efficiency, and REM latency.