Feeling dizzy? That awkward moment when you’re in the middle of a board meeting and your eyes just can’t stay open, and you realize — oh no — there’s a real chance you might fall asleep in front of your colleagues; or that time of the day you’ve just had a hearty lunch, and you know — like seriously, that’s so embarrassing. But as usual we’re here to help. On a scale of 0 to 3, how likely are you going to fall asleep? With the Epworth Sleepiness Scale you can determine your chances of staying awake, or knocking your head against the air.
Related media: Tips To Prevent Oversleeping: Health Tips
Dozing Off Again?
Let’s be honest, we all get drowsy during the active parts of the day, especially if you happen to be a night owl and stay up all night long (that’s to those silly nerds). The Epworth Sleepiness Scale isn’t engineered to test your drowsiness at any point of the day and time. Instead, it’s designed to analyze your overall sleepiness in a much larger context of your life — that’s the tendency at which you can doze off.
This test doesn’t require getting assistance from a professional to perform it for you, it is self-administered. All you need to do is rate your chances of dozing off in eight different situations on a scale of zero to three. Give a score of zero (0), if you have no chance of dozing; a score of one (1), if you have a slight chance of dozing; a score of two (2), if you have a moderate chance of dozing; and a score of three (3), if you definitely seem to doze off in those situations. Then it’s just a matter of adding up the numbers and placing yourself on a scale that goes up to 24. Got the rules? Now give it a try.
Find Your Sleep Score
On a scale of 0 to 3, rank your chances of dozing off in the following scenarios (not hypothetical):
- Sitting and reading.
- Watching television.
- Sitting inactively in a public place (e.g., a theater or a meeting).
- As a passenger in a car for an hour without a break.
- Lying down to rest in the afternoon when circumstances permit.
- Sitting and talking to someone.
- Sitting quietly after a lunch without alcohol.
- In a car, while stopped for a few minutes due to traffic.
Now calculate your score. Depending on your total score: 0 – 5 means you have below-average sleep; 6 – 10 means you have higher than average sleep; 11 – 12 means you have mildly excessive sleep, 13 – 15 means you have moderately excessive sleep; and 16 – 24 means you are severely, excessively sleepy during the day.
Finding More Sleep Solutions
The Epworth Sleepiness Scale was devised by Dr. Murray Johns in the 1990s and finalized in 1997, but it’s not the only sleepiness test available. Another alternative is the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, in this test you self-examine yourself and report your sleepiness on a scale of one to nine — with one being “extremely alert,” and nine being “fighting to stay awake.”
You might have guessed already, there are advantages and disadvantages to both scales. The Epworth scale has a slightly more concrete metric since you’re asked to analyze yourself presumably on the frequency that you’ve dozed off in the past; whereas the Karolinska scale is much better for analyzing your sleepiness at a particular time.
If you want to analyze your sleepiness at different times in the day, then the Karolinska is the test for you. It’s also good if you want to get a sense of how sleepy a sample group of people are at a particular time — administer this test at any place at any said time, and you’ll get a picture of how sleepy people are whenever, wherever, however or whatever they’re up to. But if you want to figure out how sleepy you are overall, then we recommend the Epworth Scale. And please remember, don’t doze off again!
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Written by: Nana Kwadwo, Sat, Feb 23, 2019.
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