Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire: Measuring Chronotype

The questions ask about preferred rather than actual timing: what time the person would get up and go to bed if entirely free to plan their day, how alert they feel in the first half hour after waking, when they would choose to do hard physical work or sit a demanding exam, and how they would describe themselves overall. Responses carry weighted points that sum to a single score.

Horne and Östberg published it in 1976 and linked scores to the timing of the daily peak in body temperature, which is why it is treated as a behavioural marker of the internal clock rather than a personality measure. Chronotype matters in research because it modifies how people respond to shift schedules, when they sleep best, and how strongly social timing conflicts with biological timing. It is also used to time light therapy, which is the purpose of the self-assessment version published by the Center for Environmental Therapeutics.