Typical Dream Themes in a Large Internet Sample: A Replication and Extension.
Claire Friedrich, Tore Nielsen
Journal of Sleep Research October 27, 2026 DOI: 10.1111/jsr.70476 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational survey study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 30,686 |
| Population | Individuals aged 10-85 years varying in gender and student status who completed an online Typical Dreams Questionnaire |
| Measures | Typical Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ) |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Age Dream theme diversity Gender differences Typical themes |
| Key findings | The number of typical dream themes reported decreases with age, some theme prevalences differ between males and females, and questionnaire items group into a smaller number of factors similar to an earlier study. Strong rank-order correlations between groups (males/females, students/non-students) suggest the TDQ is highly generalizable to the larger population. |
Abstract
Typical content themes in dreams still defy clear explanation. While a series of studies administering typical dream theme questionnaires mainly to college students point to a surprising consistency in the prevalence of such themes over gender, age, culture, and time, it is still unclear how generalizable such findings are to the larger population. We used a validated online questionnaire, the Typical Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ), to assess the responses of 30,686 individuals who varied in age (10-85 years), gender, and student status. Results replicated several findings from an earlier study with a much smaller sample size. This included strong evidence that the number of typical themes reported decreases with age, that the prevalence of some themes differs between males and females, and that the questionnaire items tend to group into a smaller number of factors similar to those found in the previous study. Overall evidence of strong rank-order correlations between different groups (males/females; students/non-students) for such a large sample suggests that this version of the TDQ is highly generalizable to the larger population.
Comparable studies
Other cross-sectional and survey studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insomnia Symptoms, Nightmares, and Suicidal Ideation in a College Student Sample Undergraduate students at a large, public university in the southeastern United States | 2011 | Observational cross-sectional survey | n = 583 |
| Prevalence and Correlates of Frequent Nightmares: A Community-Based 2-Phase Study Middle-aged Hong Kong Chinese adults from the community, mean age 40.9 years (SD 5.5,... | 2010 | Cross-sectional survey with subsequent clinical evaluation (two-phase design) | n = 8,558 |
| Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model Adults (general population sample) | 2003 | Cross-sectional survey with structural equation modeling | n = 444 |
| The Phenomenology of Lucid Dreaming: An Online Survey Respondents to an online survey about lucid dreams | 2014 | Online survey | n = 684 |
| Frequency of Lucid Dreaming in a Representative German Sample Representative sample of German adults | 2011 | Cross-sectional survey | n = 919 |
Citations in the library
Cites 8
- Typical Dreams: Stability and Gender Differences The Journal of Psychology 2004
- The Continuity between Waking Mood and Dream Emotions: Direct and Second-Order Effects Imagination, Cognition and Personality March 1, 2010
- Individual traits and experiences predict the content of dreams Communications Psychology April 28, 2026
- The individual determinants of morning dream recall. Communications Psychology February 18, 2025
- Automatic Annotation of Dream Report’s Emotional Content with Large Language Models Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology 2024
and 3 more in the library