Dimensional Validation of the Italian Revised Version of the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ-r) for Children and Adolescents with ASD.
The 15-item Italian CSHQ-r gives BCBAs a quick, valid snapshot of sleep problems in youth with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Le Donne et al. (2025) trimmed the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire to 15 items. They called the short form CSHQ-r.
The team gave the Italian version to kids and teens with and without autism. They ran a factor analysis to see which items clump together.
What they found
Four clear factors popped out: bedtime resistance, sleep anxiety, night waking, and daytime sleepiness.
Youth with autism scored higher on every factor than their typical peers. The gap tells us the tool spots sleep trouble in ASD.
How this fits with other research
Van Gaasbeek et al. (2026) did the same kind of check on a different sleep tool, the SDSC. They also found a tidy factor structure in autistic youth. Together the papers show: short parent forms can reliably flag sleep issues.
Lesser et al. (2019) tried a motion-detection camera instead of a form. The camera gave fair accuracy for three kids, but parents still liked having a quick checklist. The studies don’t clash—they just offer two roads: techy versus paper.
Camodeca (2025) shortened the ASRS-P6 and hit problems; the new form failed to sort ASD from typical kids. Ilenia’s CSHQ-r succeeded because sleep problems, not autism traits, were the target. Different goals, different outcomes.
Why it matters
You now have a 15-item Italian sleep screener that works. Hand it to parents at intake, get a score in five minutes, and decide if you need a full sleep assessment or bedtime intervention. No extra training, no gadgets—just faster data to help your client rest better.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sleep problems are common in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with potential repercussions on neurobehavioral functioning exacerbating socio-communicative impairments and aggressive behaviors. Parent reports are the most used method to assess sleep in pediatric populations and a modified 23-item of Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) for ASD has been proposed in the United States. The generalizability of the CSHQ for ASD has yet to be validated across countries, including Italy. To extend the CSHQ applicability to Italian youth with ASD, we back-translated to Italian and revised the 23-item CSHQ, validating its dimensional structure in a sample of children and adolescents with ASD using Explorative Graph Analysis. In addition, we compared the revised scale scores of the ASD group with a typically developing (TD) group. The revised Italian version of the CSHQ (CSHQ-r) consisted of a 15-item tool with a four-dimension structure (Sleep initiation/duration, Sleep anxiety/Co-sleeping, Night awakenings/Parasomnias, and Daytime alertness) with good structural stability. Group comparison indicated significantly higher scores in the ASD group than the TD group, suggesting greater prevalence of sleep disturbances in ASD. The four-dimensional CSHQ-r may represent a useful screening tool to assess sleep disorders in Italian children and adolescents with ASD, with potential implications for clinical practice.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00551