The Epworth Sleepiness Scale
The Epworth Sleepiness Scale is a short questionnaire that asks how likely you are to doze off in eight ordinary situations. It measures how sleepy you are day to day, which is not the same as how tired you feel.
What it measures
It asks you to rate, from 0 to 3, the chance that you would doze in each of eight everyday situations, giving a total between 0 and 24. It is not a diagnosis of anything. It is a measure of daytime sleepiness that helps a physician decide whether to investigate and gives a number to compare against after treatment.
It cannot distinguish between causes. A high score is consistent with obstructive sleep apnea, narcolepsy, insufficient sleep, shift work and several medications, and telling those apart is what the consultation is for.
Why you cannot take it here yet
This questionnaire is not on the site yet
It is a licensed instrument, and we are not going to reproduce it without permission from the people who created and validated it. Until that licence is in place, the office can go through it with you on the telephone, which is better anyway because someone can explain what your answer means.
Call (614) 898-9340What the scores mean
| Score | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 0 to 10 | Within the normal range for daytime sleepiness |
| 11 to 24 | Excessive daytime sleepiness, increasing with the score |
The bands above are deliberately coarse. Finer subdivisions are published, but they come from the licensed instrument documentation, so the precise cut points will be added with the licence rather than approximated here.
What would happen to your answers
When this does go live it will run entirely inside your browser. Nothing you select would be sent anywhere, saved anywhere, or written into the web address. There would be no box asking for your email to “send your results”, because that would turn a symptom score into health information sitting on somebody’s server.
Your result would appear on screen with a telephone number, and closing the tab would discard it.
Related: narcolepsy, sleep apnea, sleep testing.