Loneliness Literacy Scale: Development and Evaluation of an Early Indicator for Loneliness Prevention

Rianne Honigh- de Vlaming (), Annemien Haveman-Nies, Inge Bos-Oude Groeniger, Eveline Hooft van Huysduynen, Lisette Groot and Pieter Veer

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2014, vol. 116, issue 3, 989-1001

Abstract: To develop and evaluate the Loneliness Literacy Scale for the assessment of short-term outcomes of a loneliness prevention programme among Dutch elderly persons. Scale development was based on evidence from literature and experiences from local stakeholders and representatives of the target group. The scale was pre-tested among 303 elderly persons aged 65 years and over. Principal component analysis and internal consistency analysis were used to affirm the scale structure, reduce the number of items and assess the reliability of the constructs. Linear regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between the literacy constructs and loneliness. The four constructs “motivation”, “self-efficacy”, “perceived social support” and “subjective norm” derived from principal component analysis captured 56 % of the original variance. Cronbach’s coefficient α was above 0.7 for each construct. The constructs “self-efficacy” and “perceived social support” were positively and “subjective norm” was negatively associated with loneliness. To our knowledge this is the first study developing a short-term indicator for loneliness prevention. The indicator contributes to the need of evaluating public health interventions more close to the intervention activities. Copyright The Author(s) 2014

Keywords: Loneliness; Health literacy; Psychometrics; Public health; Elderly people (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-013-0322-y (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:116:y:2014:i:3:p:989-1001

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-013-0322-y

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().