Risk factors for loneliness: The high relative importance of age versus other factors

Loneliness is a potent predictor of negative health outcomes, making it important to identify risk factors for loneliness. Though extant studies have identified characteristics associated with loneliness, less is known about the cumulative and relative importance of these factors, and how their interaction may impact loneliness. Here, 4,885 individuals ages 10–97 years from the US completed the three-item UCLA Loneliness Survey on TestMyBrain.org. Using census data, we calculated the population and community household income of participants’ census area, and the proportion of individuals in the participant’s census area that shared the participant’s demographic characteristics (i.e., sociodemographic density). We evaluated the relative importance of three classes of variables for loneliness risk: those related to the person (e.g., age), place (e.g., community household income), and the interaction of person X place (sociodemographic density). We find that loneliness is highly prevalent and best explained by person (age) and place (community household income) characteristics. Of the variance in loneliness accounted for, the overwhelming majority was explained by age with loneliness peaking at 19 years and declining thereafter. The congruence between one’s sociodemographic characteristics and that of one’s neighborhood had no impact on loneliness. These data may have important implications for public health interventions.

Tags
Data and Resources
To access the resources you must log in

This item has no data

Identity

Description: The Identity category includes attributes that support the identification of the resource.

Field Value
PID https://www.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229087
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229087
URL https://figshare.com/articles/Risk_factors_for_loneliness_The_high_relative_importance_of_age_versus_other_factors/11838582
Access Modality

Description: The Access Modality category includes attributes that report the modality of exploitation of the resource.

Field Value
Access Right Open Access
Attribution

Description: Authorships and contributors

Field Value
Author Shovestul, Bridget
Author Han, Jiayin
Author Germine, Laura
Author Dodell-Feder, David
Publishing

Description: Attributes about the publishing venue (e.g. journal) and deposit location (e.g. repository)

Field Value
Collected From figshare
Hosted By figshare
Publication Date 2020-01-01
Publisher Figshare
Additional Info
Field Value
Language UNKNOWN
Resource Type Dataset
system:type dataset
Management Info
Field Value
Source https://science-innovation-policy.openaire.eu/search/dataset?datasetId=r37980778c78::c0e68afbb066c48d8a3e11bade65799f
Author jsonws_user
Last Updated 28 December 2020, 00:12 (CET)
Created 28 December 2020, 00:12 (CET)