1. What are the respondents thinking about while answering the question? How do they arrive at their answers?
All test persons could answer the question and rated their sleep quality, apart from test person 05, either as "good" (TP 04, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10) or "fair" (TP 01, 02, 03). Test person 05 justified her answer ("very bad") by saying that she
"simply did not get enough sleep at all".
Most of the respondents referred in their answers to sleeping through the night (TP 03, 04, 05, 07, 08) or to waking up at night and (not) being able to fall asleep again (TP 02, 09, 10):
- "Because I wake up more often, almost every second day, at night, after two and a half to three hours of sleep, and I cannot fall asleep again." (TP 02)
- "Because I don't sleep through the night." (TP 03)
- "Normally I go to the bathroom and fall asleep right away, without too much trouble usually." (TP 08)
- "Because I usually sleep eight hours." (TP 09)
Two test persons (TP 01, 07) also mentioned problems with snoring and one test person (TP 01) stated that she sometimes had back pain:
- "I also have back pain sometimes; my bed is not big enough. [...] Sometimes I wake up from my own snoring, which is terrible." (TP 01)
- "About once a week, I have this problem with snoring." (TP 07)
Two other test persons mentioned falling asleep or irregular sleeping:
- "I fall asleep well [...]." (TP 04)
- "[...] because I often stay out late on weekends and then come to bed late and sleep irregularly." (TP 06)
2. How easy or difficult is it for the respondents to answer the question?
The majority of the test persons found answering the question "very easy" (n = 5) or "rather easy" (n = 4). Only test person 01 found it "rather difficult" to answer, as she would have liked to have an answer between "good" and "fair" in order to answer the question more accurately:
"I would have liked to have had a category between good and fair [because it is not good, but tends to be better than fair].”
3. What do the respondents understand by „sleep quality“?
All test persons defined "sleep quality" as falling asleep quickly, sleeping through the night or falling asleep again quickly after waking up in the night and/or waking up rested:
- "When you can sleep through the night without problems, without getting up." (TP 03)
- "Sleep quality for me means falling asleep well, sleeping through the night and waking up relaxed." (TP 06)
- "To sleep through the night and wake up feeling refreshed, not still tired and exhausted." (TP 08)
- "That I fall asleep calmly and if I wake up in the night I fall asleep quickly. When I wake up in the morning, I'm not tired. I'm comfortable.” (TP 09)
