The Person Alone | Alone in The Presence of Others: Measuring Loneliness (2nd Article)

Are you interested in finding out how lonely you are? If so, try your hand at the following questionnaire.

For each statement, indicate how often you feel the way described. Circle one number for each statement.

		Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often
1.	I am unhappy doing so many things alone.	1	2	3	4
2.	I have nobody to talk to.	1	2	3	4
3.	I cannot tolerate being so alone.	1	2	3	4
4.	I feel as if nobody really understand me.	1	2	3	4
5.	I find myself waiting for people to call or write.	1	2	3	4
6.	I feel completely alone.	1	2	3	4
7.	I am unable to reach out and communicate with those around me.	1	2	3	4
8.	I feel starved for company.	1	2	3	4
9.	It is difficult for me to make friends.	1	2	3	4
10.	I feel shut out and excluded by others.	1	2	3	4

Reproduced with the permission of the authors.

                Now, to determine how lonely you are, simply add up your total score. If your score is 30 or greater, you have unfortunately known the pangs of loneliness, since that would mean that you have tended to mark the items which indicate loneliness “sometimes” or “often.” Indeed, if your score is 25 or more you would appear to be more lonely than the average student at UCLA or the University of Tulsa, where some of the original data were gathered for development of loneliness scales. (Russell, Peplau, & Ferguson, 1978; Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980).

                The items included above were part of the first form of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, but were excluded from the final version, though they appear to have some validity and reliability. They are included above were part of the first form of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, but were excluded from the final version, though they appear to have some validity and reliability. They are included here in order to give you some feeling for how such scales are utilized. Investigators are understandably reluctant to include their scales in widely used publications, since that might damage their usefulness as instruments for research and diagnosis. The Loneliness Scale was developed and improved through administration to a larger number of respondents both in university and non-university populations. Items which did not hang together, which were not reliable, were gradually weeded out and the scale ultimately reduced to twenty items. In addition, there were tests of validity of the scales through such means as administering them to students who signed up for assistance in a “Loneliness Clinic” and by comparing people who were depressed, or undergoing psychotherapy for problems which included loneliness. Some of the correlates of loneliness, as measured by these scales are described in the text. Using these measures, the investigators determined that loneliness seems particularly high for people in their late teens, UCLA Freshmen are particularly lonely, 20% are as lonely as more advanced students whose loneliness is so severe that they choose to come to special loneliness clinics. Loneliness appears to decline over the years, so that older people tend to be less lonely than middle-aged and younger people—until they reach a very old age (in their eighties) at which point loneliness appears to increase again.

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1983). SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America.)

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