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Impact of Caring on Families and Carers
Published in Mary E. Braine, Julie Wray, Supporting Families & Carers, 2018
Within the context of family and carers, it is critical that nurses capitalise on opportunities in the community to reduce caregiver’s social isolation and loneliness to mitigate against potential adverse effects on their health and well-being. However, despite the substantial evidence linking social isolation with negative health outcomes, it is rarely assessed in the community setting. Understanding risk factors and associated variables of social isolation provides nurses with important areas to inquire about during their assessment of caregivers. One way of assessing contributing factors such as lack of belonging is to use appropriate rapid screening tools, although the number of instruments designed specifically to measure isolation is limited. The most commonly used instrument is the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell 1996) designed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness or social isolation and has been repeatedly validated, whereas the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6) (Lubben et al. 2006) is a popular measure of a person’s social network or community.
Psychoneuroimmunology
Published in Deborah Fish Ragin, Health Psychology, 2017
In two studies exploring the association between loneliness and inflammation, researchers Jaremka and colleagues (2013) examined the relationship between loneliness and stress on inflammation. They first evaluated participants based on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a common scale used to assess level of perceived loneliness and isolation. This measure helped researchers sort the participants into two groups, a high-loneliness group and a low-loneliness group. As done in other studies, they drew blood to collect baseline cytokine levels, after which study subjects were given a task designed to induce acute stress. In this case, the participants were instructed to prepare a 10-minute speech on why they would be the best candidate for a job. Then, after presenting the speech orally to a non-responsive (by design) audience, the participants completed an oral math task, again in front of the same deadpan audience. The tasks themselves, preparing a speech and oral math, were designed to be stressful. Performing the tasks for an unresponsive audience intensified the stress.
Current research themes on aging and adaptation
Published in Peter G. Coleman, Ann O’Hanlon, Aging and Development, 2017
Peter G. Coleman, Ann O’Hanlon
Much of the research to date has examined loneliness solely as a psychological or felt inner experience, despite evidence that loneliness takes place within a wider social context. To examine the latter, Ayalon (2016) surveyed vulnerable older people aged 70-plus years (n = 388) in receipt of paid care, another of their family members (n = 686), and each care receiver’s paid caregiver (n = 523). Each person interviewed reported his or her level of loneliness using the three-item Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale with responses on a simplified three-point Likert type scale from ‘never’ to ‘very frequently’; scale items asked how often they felt a lack of companionships, felt left out or felt isolated from others. Additional measures included subjective health status (using a single-item question, with higher ratings representing better subjective health), and well-being using the five-item WHO-5 in which each of the three groups rated five items addressing positive mood, vitality and general interests on a six-point scale with higher scores indicating better well-being. Participants were also asked to rate on a ten-point scale their perceived control in three areas: health status, financial status and everyday life. Consistent with other research, higher levels of loneliness were associated with less favourable quality of life and well-being indicators. Additionally, two types of loneliness profile were identified: a larger group characterised by low levels of loneliness among all three members, and a smaller group that was characterised by relatively high levels of loneliness among all three members. While most research focuses on loneliness as an individual felt experience, it is not yet clear if these findings will be replicated with other groups and triads.
Exploratory analysis of college students’ occupational engagement during COVID-19
Published in Journal of Occupational Science, 2022
Valerie Tapia, Elizabeth B. Isralowitz, Kelly Deng, Nikki T. Nguyen, Maggie Young, Dominique H. Como, Melissa Martinez, Thomas Valente, Sharon A. Cermak
Loneliness was measured utilizing the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3), a 20-item questionnaire with scores ranging from 20-80 with higher scores indicating more loneliness (Russell, 1996). An example question is “How often do you feel like you are ‘in tune’ with the people around you?” Participants responded on a 4-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = always). Items are coded (reverse coded as needed) so that higher values indicate greater loneliness. The Loneliness Scale shows strong internal consistency (α = .89 - .94) and test-retest reliability over one year (r = .73). The measure showed significant correlations with two other measures of loneliness, supporting concurrent validity and negatively associated with measures of social support (Russell, 1996). A 2018 Cigna report using the Loneliness Scale (version 3), based on a national survey of 20,000 adults, revealed that nearly half of Americans report symptoms of loneliness sometimes or always, with younger generations, including college-aged adults (18-22 years old), showing the highest loneliness score of 48.30. Additionally, the study found that having a good balance of sleep, work, time for oneself, and family and friends are related to lower loneliness (Cigna, 2018).
University students under lockdown, the psychosocial effects and coping strategies during COVID-19 pandemic: A cross sectional study in Egypt
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2022
Ahmed Hashem El-Monshed, Ahmed Anwer El-Adl, Ahmed Salah Ali, Ahmed Loutfy
The second section measured the psychosocial effects of COVID-19 pandemic using two instruments, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale, version 324 and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21).19 The UCLA Loneliness Scale is a widely used self-report instrument of loneliness consisting of 20 items designed to measure both emotional as well as social loneliness. Response of each item was rated on a four-point scale from (1) never to (4) always felt as expressed in each item. Final score ranges from 20 to 80 with higher scores demonstrating higher feelings of loneliness. The scale’s reliability was found to be high with alpha coefficients ranging from 0.89 to 0.94 for samples of students. The Arabic version of UCLA Loneliness Scale was used in the current study according to the Arabic translation in Egyptian culture by Daswqee.20 The correlation coefficients values were 0.76 for females and 0.74 for males.
Loneliness, Mental Health, and Substance Use among US Young Adults during COVID-19
Published in Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 2021
Viviana E. Horigian, Renae D. Schmidt, Daniel J. Feaster
The mean score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale was 49.54 (SD 7.9), with 49% of the population reporting scores above 50 (see Table 2). The mean score for the AUDIT was 9.36 (SD 7.9). Most respondents (80%) reported drinking alcohol, with 30% reporting AUDIT scores above 16, revealing harmful and dependent levels of drinking. Nineteen percent of respondents reported binge drinking at least weekly and 44% reported binging at least monthly. The mean DAST-10 score was 1.04 (SD 2.3), with 22% of the sample reporting drug use, and 38% of the users scoring above 5, indicating substantial and severe drug use. The mean score for the GAD-7 was 10.44 (SD 4.4), and 62% of the sample reported scores of 10 or above, revealing moderate (45%) and severe (17%) anxiety (Spitzer et al. 2006). Mean score for the CES-D was 13.69 (SD 5.1), with 79% scoring 10 or above, indicating the presence of “significant depressive symptoms” (Andresen et al. 1994). The mean score for the SC-15 was 53.55 (SD 9.9), with 65% falling within the middle quintile. Pearson correlation coefficients revealed associations between the UCLA Loneliness Scale and the AUDIT (correlation coefficient of 0.20, p< .0001), the DAST-10 (correlation coefficient of 0.14, p< .0001), the GAD-7 (correlation coefficient of 0.47, p <.0001), the CES-D (correlation coefficient of 0.55, p <.0001), and the SC-15 (correlation coefficient of −0.71, p <.0001). Detailed scores by scoring category are presented in Table 2.