Assessing circadian preferences in Portuguese adolescents: development and preliminary validation of a reduced Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire

ABSTRACT

Our work aimed to provide a validated reduced form of the Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire to Portuguese adolescents (ages: 12–14 years). Using the dataset from the initial validation study of the full questionnaire (19 items) to Portuguese adolescents, we derived a 10-item reduced form – aMEQ-R (Phase 1); this was the smallest set of items that allowed us to obtain acceptable internal consistency. This reduced version was then submitted to an independent validation study (Phase 2). Participants in this phase responded to our reduced 10-item version and, 3–4 weeks later, the same participants responded to the full Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire. In both sessions we also assessed trait-anxiety, a variable that has been related to chronotype in order to obtain an additional measure of validation. Acceptable internal consistency was obtained in this dataset, such as Cronbach’s alpha = .717, as well as other indexes (e.g. classification agreement). Moreover, we confirmed that the aMEQ-R is sensitive to capture the usually reported relation between an eveningness tendency and higher trait-anxiety. In this preliminary study, we propose a suitable reduced instrument to assess chronotype in Portuguese adolescents.

Abbreviations: aMEQ-R: Reduced form of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for Adolescents; aMEQ: Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for Adolescents; MEQ: Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire; CSM: Composite Scale of Morningness; TASC: Trait Anxiety Scale for Children; SM: Supplemental Material.

KEYWORDS:

• Chronotype
• Portuguese adolescents
• reduced form
• Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire
• psychometric properties
• trait-anxiety

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/09291016.2018.1512291.

Notes

1. The original datasets will be provided upon request to the corresponding author.

2. In each session, one additional questionnaire not related to the aims of the present study was administrated. © 1970 Charles D. Spielberger. All rights reserved in all media. Published by Mind Garden, Inc., www.mindgarden.com.

Additional information

Funding

Pedro F. S. Rodrigues, Pedro Bem-Haja, and Natália Lisandra Fernandes were supported by PhD Fellowships [Refs. SFRH/BD/84279/2012, SFRH/BD/85928/2012, and SFRH/BD/109775/2015, respectively] and Josefa N. S. Pandeirada was supported by a Research and an Investigator Grant [Ref. IF/00058/2012/CP0172/CT0002]; all of these supports were provided by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). This article was also supported by ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the operation POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007746 funded by the Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização – COMPETE2020 and by National Funds through FCT within CINTESIS, R&D Unit [Ref. UID/IC/4255/2013]. A special acknowledgment is made to the Group of Schools from Águeda, Águeda Sul, Aveiro, Gafanha da Nazaré, Murtosa, Oliveira do Bairro, and Colégio D. José I, for their collaboration in this study.