The Insomnia Severity Index
The Insomnia Severity Index is a seven-item questionnaire measuring how severe your insomnia is and how much it is affecting your daytime life. It is the standard way of tracking whether insomnia treatment is working.
What it measures
Seven items, each scored 0 to 4, giving a total from 0 to 28. It covers difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, waking too early, satisfaction with your sleep, how noticeable the problem is to others, how much it distresses you, and how much it interferes with daily functioning.
Its real value is repeat measurement. A single score describes today; the change in score over a course of treatment is what tells you whether the treatment is working. It is the standard outcome measure in CBT-I trials, which is why you may be asked to complete it more than once.
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 7 | No clinically significant insomnia |
| 8 to 14 | Subthreshold insomnia |
| 15 to 21 | Clinical insomnia, moderate severity |
| 22 to 28 | Clinical insomnia, severe |
These four bands are the widely published interpretation of the index.
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.