The De Jong Gierveld short scales for emotional and social loneliness: tested on data from 7 countries in the UN generations and gender surveys

Jenny De Jong Gierveld 0 1 Theo Van Tilburg 0 1 0 T. Van Tilburg Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University , Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1 J. De Jong Gierveld (&) Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) , The Hague, Netherlands Loneliness concerns the subjective evaluation of the situation individuals are involved in, characterized either by a number of relationships with friends and colleagues which is smaller than is considered desirable (social loneliness), as well as situations where the intimacy in confidant relationships one wishes for has not been realized (emotional loneliness). To identify people who are lonely direct questions are not sufficient; loneliness scales are preferred. In this article, the quality of the three-item scale for emotional loneliness and the three-item scale for social loneliness has been investigated for use in the following countries participating in the United Nations ''Generations and Gender Surveys'': France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Japan. Sample sizes for the 7 countries varied between 8,158 and 12,828. Translations of the De Jong Gierveld loneliness scale have been tested using reliability and validity tests including a confirmatory factor analysis to test the two-dimensional structure of loneliness. Test outcomes indicated for each of the countries under investigation reliable and valid scales for emotional and social loneliness, respectively. - Social embeddedness in the realms of the family and the broader community and alleviation of loneliness are central issues in the construction of social well-being and quality of life. This is true for younger as well as older people, and justifies the ongoing interest of social scientists in investigating the social bonds of individuals in different phases of the life course, as well as identifying the mechanisms responsible for creating either social embeddedness or loneliness. Loneliness is a universal phenomenon, but the antecedents vary, to a large extent based on personal and contextual determinants (De Jong Gierveld et al. 2006). Loneliness is a subjective and negative experience, and is the outcome of the subjective, cognitive evaluation of there being a mismatch between the quantity and quality of existing relationships on the one hand, and relationship standards on the other (Perlman and Peplau 1981). Loneliness is but one of the possible outcomes of the evaluation of a situation characterized by a small number of relationships. Where a person appears along the subjective loneliness continuum depends on his or her relationship standards. Dykstra and De Jong Gierveld (1994) showed, for example, that the degree to which widowed adults experienced loneliness depended, among other factors, on their partner standard; the more importance placed on having a partner, the more lonely the widowed were. Many factors, among which socioeconomic ones (education, income), physical and mental health, and social roles (being a spouse, parent) are more or less directly associated with the size, composition and perceived quality of ones social network, and through these variables associated with loneliness (Hawkley et al. 2008). Some of the determinants of loneliness, such as the deaths of the partner and of peers, deteriorating health and financial pressures, are directly related to events and transitions in later phases of life. Therefore, research into loneliness of older adults is especially important. Policy makers are interested to know more about both the social embeddedness and loneliness of adults. Additionally, they may want to compare the situation of adults in their own country with adults in neighboring countries in order to investigate the similarities and differences in social characteristics and the outcomes of relevant social policies in these countries. To answer questions on differences in embeddedness and loneliness between countries reliable and valid measuring instruments are needed. This article addresses the loneliness measurement as used in the United Nations Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS). In 2000, the Population Activities Unit (PAU) of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) launched the Generations and Gender Programme. The Programme is a system of national Generations and Gender Surveys and contextual databases. The main substantive goal of the Programme is to improve understanding of the factors that influence demographic development. By the end of 2008, ten countries had completed the fieldwork for the first wave of the panel surveys. For each country face-to-face interviews with a random sample of the population aged 18 to 79 years had been completed. Main themes in the survey questionnaire were: the descriptive and explanatory factors of social and demographic developments, with particular attention given to relationships between adult children and parents (generations) and relationships between partners (gender). For more information, see Vikat et al. (2007). Included in the questionnaire was a module about health and well-being, encompassing among other things a three-item emotional loneliness scale, and a three-item social loneliness scale. Data from the loneliness scales were available for respondents in seven countries: France, Germany and the Netherlands from Western Europe, Bulgaria, the Russian Federation and Georgia from Eastern Europe, and Japan. Demographically the countries differed significantly, especially where the ageing of the populations was concerned; moreover, socioeconomic indicators revealed sharp differences in economic well-being between countries (see Table 1). Before starting comparative research, we need to know the extent to which measuring instruments for emotional and social loneliness are useful tools in this context. We formulated our research questions as follows: Are the 3-item emotional and the 3-item social loneliness scales as translated for use in different countries, reliable and valid measuring instruments? Are the associations of loneliness with several factors indicative of general mechanisms that operate in various countries more or less in a similar way? In this article, the outcomes of tests investigating both the reliability and validity of the emotional and social loneliness scales are reported, in order to provide fellow researchers with solid information about the usefulness of the scales for culturally and economically divergent countries. It is often thought that loneliness is a problem present specifically among older adults; however, this assumption finds only limited support (Dykstra 2009). We, therefore, studied both older and younger adults. The concept of loneliness Loneliness has to be differentiated from social isolation which denotes the objective characteristics of a situation and refers to the absence of relationships with other people (Cornwell and Waite 2009). Investigating social isolation requires the identification of the o (...truncated)