Ambient Teens Sleep Study: Protocol for a co-produced feasibility study in adolescents using a contactless radar-based sleep sensor.

Abstract

Sleep is crucial for the healthy development of adolescents, yet many suffer from chronic sleep deprivation. Over the transition to and course of adolescence there are known changes to sleep patterns e.g. shifts towards evening chronotypes. To study changes and patterns of sleep over these critical developmental time-points, detailed longitudinal data is required over months/years rather than weeks/days, a typical limitation of current technology. The implementation of novel contactless sleep sensors offers significant opportunities for longer term data collection, but their application has yet to be explored in young people in terms of feasibility, acceptability, performance and operability. The Ambient Teens Sleep Study will assess the feasibility of a contactless sleep sensor with approximately 45 adolescents aged 8-18 years, for 4 weeks. The device will be compared with accelerometery and sleep diary data, collected concurrently (2 weeks). Young people will provide feedback in the form of online calls and questionnaires as well as citizen scientist and product reviewer activities. Baseline questionnaires, conducted online, will be used to determine acceptability in different cohorts such as age, sex, gender and geographic location. We aim to assess completeness of data, participant experience and performance of sleep timing measures across all three methods of sleep assessment (contactless radar, accelerometery and sleep diary). The results will be used to inform longitudinal methods of sleep data collection in future adolescent health studies, at scale, to explore links between sleep and essential health outcomes across adolescent development.