Patient Tools · Sleep Questionnaires
What this is — and why I made it
Far too often a sleep study reduces a person to a single number — the AHI, the number of times you stop breathing per hour. But that number tells us surprisingly little about how you actually feel. I see people who are using CPAP, whose "numbers are good", but who still feel exhausted, low or simply not themselves — and when they tell their doctor, the answer comes back: "but your numbers are fine." The two sides aren't speaking the same language.
This free set of questionnaires is my attempt to fix that. It puts your experience of poor sleep into clear, validated numbers you can take to your GP or sleep centre — so the conversation is about how you feel, not just your AHI. It's especially useful if you've had a "normal" study but still don't feel right, or if you're on CPAP and want to show exactly where you have, and haven't, improved. You can complete the questionnaires at the top of this page.
About the STAMP score
I developed the STAMP questionnaire because I was frustrated with the existing sleep questionnaires — they didn't really capture the type of patient I was seeing. I brought in 200 people with obstructive sleep apnoea and asked them about every problem their sleep caused: waking to pass urine, low mood, tiredness, embarrassment — everything. I then tabulated all of it and picked out the 20 questions that best defined the experience of living with sleep apnoea.
Those 20 questions fall into five domains, which give the questionnaire its name:
- S — Symptoms (the physical things, like night sweats, a dry throat or reduced sex drive)
- T — Tiredness
- A — Alertness (concentration, memory, staying awake)
- M — Mood (anxiety, low mood, irritability)
- P — Psychosocial (worry, embarrassment, the effect on relationships and day-to-day function)
You score each question from 0 to 5, giving a total from 0 to 100. As a simple surgeon, I find a 0–100 scale far more intuitive than scales like the Epworth's 0–24 — it's easy to see roughly where you sit.
Crucially, STAMP is not designed to tell you whether you have sleep apnoea — STOP-BANG already does that job well. STAMP describes the experience of it: how much it's affecting your life. That's what lets you see detail that a single number hides. Someone using CPAP for a few hours a night might find their tiredness improving while their mood and alertness lag behind until they use it for longer — and many people don't realise this until they complete a questionnaire like this. The psychosocial domain matters too: feeling embarrassed or worried about your sleep is a real and treatable part of the condition, just as we treat the psychosocial impact of conditions all over medicine.
Is STAMP validated?
Yes. STAMP has been re-validated in a large independent sample of over 1,300 people. It showed very high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha 0.92), good stability over time (intraclass correlation 0.83), and behaved exactly as a quality-of-life measure should — correlating strongly with insomnia severity and mood, but only weakly with apnoea-risk scores like STOP-BANG. In other words, it reliably measures symptom burden, which is precisely what it was built to do.
Understanding your STAMP score
Your total runs from 0 to 100 — the higher the score, the greater the impact your sleep problem is having on your life. As a rough guide:
These bands are an interpretive guide, not a diagnosis. STAMP measures how you feel, not whether you have sleep apnoea — what matters most is using the score, and any change in it over time, as part of a conversation with your GP or sleep team.
Watch: why I made the STAMP questionnaire
The other questionnaires in the set
Alongside STAMP, you'll complete a battery of internationally recognised, validated questionnaires. Together they build a rounded picture of your sleep and how it affects you. Each is widely used in sleep clinics around the world.
- STOP-BANG — the screening tool for the risk of obstructive sleep apnoea. This is the one that helps flag whether apnoea is likely, scored from 0 to 8 (higher means higher risk).
- Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) — measures daytime sleepiness: how likely you are to doze off in everyday situations. Scored 0 to 24.
- Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) — measures the severity of insomnia: difficulty falling or staying asleep and how much it bothers you. Scored 0 to 28.
- Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) — a well-established measure of anxiety and low mood, both of which are closely tied to poor sleep.
Because each tool measures something different — apnoea risk, sleepiness, insomnia, mood and overall symptom burden — seeing them side by side often explains far more than any one of them alone.
Take this to your GP or sleep centre
The whole point of the report is to help you have a more productive conversation with a healthcare professional. Bring the emailed report to your GP, your sleep centre, or to a consultation with me — it puts your symptoms into numbers that are easy to share and easy to track over time. And if you'd like to learn to read your sleep study itself, our home sleep study service page has videos that walk you through it.
Related
- Home Sleep Study Service
- UARS & the TAB / AB Diagnostic Service
- ISMA GP-referred sleep clinic
- Snoring & Obstructive Sleep Apnoea — overview
These questionnaires support, but do not replace, clinical judgement. They are not a diagnosis. If you have severe daytime sleepiness or symptoms suggestive of significant sleep apnoea, please seek a formal assessment promptly.