How to Determine Your Chronotype and Ideal Sleep Schedule

Chronotypes are behavioral templates determined by a person's internal clock and circadian rhythms. All humans exhibit a sleep-wake cycle and most show a diurnal preference (waking during daylight and sleeping at night), but research shows that different people function best at different times of day.

While environmental factors (like overnight shift work, jet lag, or strenuous physical activity) can affect your sleep patterns, sleep duration, and sleep quality, the study of chronobiology suggests that your sleep chronotype is innate. An inherited "clock gene" can dictate events like melatonin release, redox cycles, and changes in body temperature—each of which correlates with events in the sleep-wake cycle.

Over several decades, biologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists have developed questionnaires to help you determine your sleep chronotype.

1. 1. Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (Auto-MEQ): This self-assessment questionnaire is based on a 1976 template developed by Swedish psychiatrist Olov Östberg. For its part, the Östberg Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire builds on the work of O. Öquist and J.A. Horne.
2. 2. Circadian Type Questionnaire (CTQ): This 20-item questionnaire was developed by Simon Folkard, Lee Di Milia, and Peter Smith. It measures a person's ability to counteract drowsiness and the rigidity of their sleep patterns.
3. 3. Diurnal Type Scale: Researchers Lars Torsvall and Torbjörn Åkerstedt developed this questionnaire in 1980 for construction shift workers to isolate traits of morning types, evening types, and those in between. Assessing yourself on this scale can explain your natural sleep rhythms and predict certain traits, such as early afternoon drowsiness.
4. 4. Munich Chronotype Questionnaire: Also known as the MCTQ, this questionnaire was developed by German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg. It helps measure what Roenneberg calls "the phase angle of entrainment." This shows how light cycles can affect the sleep cycles of infants, children, young adults, and full grown adults. Metabolic differences among these populations can change; for instance, the MCTQ has shown an eveningness preference in teenagers who may one day go on to be early birds.
5. 5. Composite Scale of Morningness: This composite assessment combines questions from the aforementioned MEQ, CTQ, and MCTQ. It is widely used in the study of sleep patterns and sleep disorders and is currently available in 14 languages.
6. 6. The Power of When: This 2016 book by Dr. Michael J. Breus includes a self-assessment questionnaire that groups people into one of four sleep chronotypes, which Breus calls the bear chronotype, the wolf chronotype, the lion chronotype, and the dolphin chronotype. They correlate respectively with the classic morning chronotype, the evening chronotype, those who wake up before dawn, and light-sleeping insomniacs.

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