Morning affect or sleep inertia? Comparing the constructs and their measurement

Abstract

The construct of Morning Affect (MA; alertness upon awakening/time required to feel fully awake) emerged from exploratory factor analysis of morningness-eveningness questionnaires, and while it has been equated with morningness-eveningness preference it has much conceptual overlap with sleep inertia (SI; the transitional state between sleep and being fully awake). The current study compared questionnaire measures of these constructs to help clarify their inter-relationships. A volunteer sample of 453 students at an English-medium university in China completed an online survey including the Sleep Inertia Questionnaire (SIQ), the Morningness-Eveningness-Stability-Scale-improved (MESSi), with subscales for MA, Eveningness, and Distinctness (amplitude of diurnal variation), and the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (rMEQ). Measures of depression, sleep quality, mindfulness, and personality were also included. Exploratory factor analysis of the SIQ, MESSi, and rMEQ items revealed seven factors: Cognitive, Emotional, and Physiological SI, Responses to SI (including one MA item), and Duration of SI (one SIQ item, 3/5 MA items, and one rMEQ item); Morningness-Eveningness (MESSi Eveningness items, plus 3/5 rMEQ items); Distinctness (3/5 MESSi items). These results suggest that Morning Affect may be better characterised as a general measure of sleep inertia, and may contribute to ongoing development/refinement of questionnaire measures of circadian functioning.