Chronotype quiz: are you a morning or evening person?

Your chronotype is the time of day your body naturally prefers to sleep and be alert, and it is largely genetic rather than a habit. This quiz uses the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, a published research instrument, to place you on the scale from definite evening type to definite morning type. Chronotype shifts earlier with age, and the menopause transition disrupts the sleep timing that depends on it.

Chronotype describes when your body wants to sleep, not when your schedule lets you. It is substantially genetic, it shifts earlier as you age, and working against it is associated with worse sleep quality and mood regardless of how many hours you get.

This matters in the menopause transition for a specific reason. Falling estrogen disrupts sleep architecture at the same time as age is shifting chronotype earlier, so a woman who was comfortably a night owl at 35 can find herself waking at four and unable to return to sleep at 50 — two separate changes arriving together.

The questions below are the reduced Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, used in sleep research since 1991.

Read more on this

Sources

• Sleep Foundation — Chronotypes
• Sleep Foundation — Menopause and sleep
• The Menopause Society — patient education

Other self-checks