We require a research based device for children to wear to monitor sleep over a period of time. We have looked at Evenson et al. (2015), Lee et al. (2018) and Liang and Chapa-Martell (2019). The consensus appears to be that FitBit is the best brand, but we specifically need to know which device to use as they all use different.
As technology is changing all the time and devices are updated all the time, we wondered if anyone knows of any current research being done with sleep and wearable devices that may help us.
Regards
In my opinion “Fitbit smart watches” has the function sleep tracker, which might be useful as per your question. And this is researched as well :-https://www.fitabase.com/research-library/
Article Wearable Sleep Technology in Clinical and Research Settings
And this is affordable too.
Aside from fitbit, there a couple out there used for research on ambulatory sleep monitoring:
Actiwatch Spectrum Accelerometer: Measures light exposure and activity data
AX3 Accelerometer: Miniature logging accelerometer. Includes temp and light sensor.
GeneActiv Accelerometer: Measures rest-activity pattern throughout the day.
Who do you consider as the authority to differentiate sleep vs. no sleep or which accuracy of the data/result do you want?
Consumer devices such as the Fitbit and others do not output you some raw values but they interpret data and just give you their estimate – sometimes based on guessing, sometimes based on something else. These devices can give you acceptable results, but you need to be aware that professional sleep research labs might use something different. Are you ok with the device software’s interpretation about when the participant was sleeping or would you like to collect raw data and do the analysis and interpretation by yourself? Also think about the data interface – do you want to further process the data? If yes, check which software/app can output you the sleep data. Do you need to synchronize the data with something else?
Another thing you mentioned is ‘children’. They have smaller wrists circumferences and not all devices (consumer of professional) cover a wrist range from children to obese adults – many devices might rather cover a range rather at the upper than the lower end.
Would such a device disturb children to an extent that they would exhibit different sleep patterns?
Sorry for raising more questions instead of answering some. But think about these questions before the experiment if you plan to publish the research afterwards and try peer-review ;-)
The gold standard in this area of measurement was set with the Cole-Kripke algorithm established with the Actigraph brand wrist activity monitor (WAM):
Cole, R. J., Kripke, D. F., Gruen, W., Mullaney, D. J., & Gillin, J. C. (1992). Automatic sleep/wake identification from wrist activity. Sleep, 15(5), 461–469.
My friend, Dr. John Caldwell, has established (unpublished) that the Fatigue Science Readiband performs as well as the Actigraph when compare to polysomnography.
You should also read the review,
Russo, K., Goparaju, B., & Bianchi, M. T. (2015). Consumer sleep monitors: Is there a baby in the bathwater? Nature and Science of Sleep, 7, 147–157.
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