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UCLA Loneliness Scale

The UCLA Loneliness Scale is a 20-item self-report questionnaire designed to assess an individual's subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation, originally developed in 1978 by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), including Daniel Russell, Letitia Anne Peplau, and Mary L. Ferguson.^[1] Respondents rate statements such as "I lack companionship" or "I feel in tune with the people around me" on a Likert-type scale from never (1) to often (4), with higher total scores indicating greater loneliness after reverse-scoring positive items.^[2] The scale emerged from early 1970s research on loneliness as a distinct psychological experience, separate from mere social network size, with the original version demonstrating strong internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.97) and test-retest reliability (r = 0.73 over several weeks).^[1] It showed concurrent validity through correlations with related constructs like depression (r = 0.56) and low self-esteem (r = -0.52), while discriminant validity was evidenced by weak associations with social desirability (r = -0.12).^[1] In response to criticisms of the initial all-negative items potentially biasing responses, a revised version was introduced in 1980 by Russell, Peplau, and Carolyn E. Cutrona, incorporating 10 positive and 10 negative items to balance wording and improve discriminant validity against negative affectivity (e.g., r = 0.56 with the Beck Depression Inventory, beyond shared variance with mood).^[3] This revision maintained high reliability (α = 0.94) and correlated strongly with self-reported loneliness labels (r = 0.71).^[3] Further refinement led to Version 3 in 1996, which streamlined item wording for clarity and confirmed a unidimensional factor structure via exploratory and confirmatory analyses across college and elderly samples, with excellent reliability (α = 0.95) and validity (e.g., r = 0.87 with the original scale).^[4] Shorter adaptations, such as the 3-item version (2004), have been validated for large-scale surveys, retaining strong psychometrics (α = 0.72; r = 0.82 with the full scale) and enabling efficient assessment in epidemiological research.^[5] The UCLA Loneliness Scale has become the most widely adopted measure in loneliness research, appearing in over 21 studies reviewed in systematic analyses and cited thousands of times for examining links to health outcomes like depression, cardiovascular disease, and mortality.^[6] Its unidimensional focus on emotional isolation—rather than objective social deficits—has facilitated cross-cultural applications and informed public health interventions, though ongoing validations address potential cultural biases and response styles.^[7]

Overview

Purpose and Conceptualization

The UCLA Loneliness Scale is a self-report questionnaire that assesses subjective feelings of loneliness, focusing on the individual's perceived emotional experience rather than objective indicators of social network size or frequency of interactions. This distinction underscores that loneliness arises from personal dissatisfaction with social connections, not merely their absence.^[8] The scale's theoretical foundation draws from early psychological research viewing loneliness as a unidimensional construct characterized by emotional distress due to perceived deficiencies in social relationships. Perlman and Peplau (1981) defined loneliness as "the unpleasant experience that occurs when a person's network of social relationships is, in some important way, deficient in quantity or quality," emphasizing its role as a subjective state of relational shortfall rather than a multifaceted or situational phenomenon.^[9] This conceptualization treats loneliness as varying primarily in intensity, providing a cohesive framework for measuring its core affective component across individuals.^[10] Developed to address the need for a psychometrically sound instrument in social psychology, the scale aimed to enable standardized empirical investigations into loneliness among adults, facilitating reliable comparisons in research on its prevalence, correlates, and impacts. Over time, it has evolved through multiple versions, but its foundational purpose remains centered on capturing this subjective emotional dimension.

Versions and Evolution

The UCLA Loneliness Scale was initially developed in 1978 as a 20-item self-report measure designed to capture subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation among college students, with all items worded negatively to assess relational deficits and emotional isolation.^[1] This original version demonstrated high internal consistency (α = .97) but was susceptible to response bias due to its uniform negative phrasing, which could encourage acquiescent answering patterns.^[11] In 1980, the scale underwent revision to address these limitations, resulting in the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA), a 20-item instrument that balanced 10 positively worded items (assessing social connectedness) with 10 negatively worded items to mitigate response set biases and improve discriminant validity.^[12] The revision maintained the unidimensional structure focused on global loneliness while enhancing content validity through items that more precisely reflected both emotional and social aspects of isolation, yielding improved reliability (α = .94) and correlations with related constructs like social anxiety.^[3] The 1996 iteration, known as Version 3 (UCLA-LS3), further refined the R-UCLA by selecting and rephrasing 20 items for greater clarity and reduced ambiguity, eliminating vague terms from prior versions to strengthen psychometric properties without altering the core unidimensional focus on loneliness as a subjective experience.^[4] This version exhibited superior internal consistency (α = .95) and test-retest reliability (r = .82 over three weeks) across diverse samples, including college students and older adults, confirming its robustness for broader applications.^[13] Subsequent adaptations produced shorter forms to facilitate use in large-scale surveys where time constraints limit full administration. The 3-item version (ULS-3), derived from the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, employs a simplified response format (hardly ever, some of the time, often) and focuses on core relational themes, achieving adequate reliability (α = .72) and validity in population-based studies.^[5] Similarly, the 8-item short form (ULS-8), based on the revised scale, balances positive and negative wording across social and emotional items, offering high reliability (α = .84) and strong convergence with the full 20-item version (r = .91) for efficient assessments.^[14] Throughout its evolution, updates to the UCLA Loneliness Scale have consistently prioritized enhancements in clarity, bias reduction, and psychometric precision while preserving its unidimensional conceptualization of loneliness.^[15]

Development

Origins and Creators

The UCLA Loneliness Scale was developed by psychologists Daniel Russell, Letitia Anne Peplau, and Mary L. Ferguson at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1978.^[1] This collaborative effort aimed to create a standardized tool for assessing subjective feelings of loneliness, drawing on the researchers' expertise in social psychology and interpersonal relationships.^[16] The scale emerged amid a surge in loneliness research during the 1970s, a decade when scholars began treating loneliness as a pressing public health concern linked to emotional distress, social isolation, and broader societal changes like urbanization and shifting family structures.^[16] Influential works, such as Robert Weiss's 1973 book Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation, underscored the need for empirical study, while campus surveys at UCLA revealed that over 70% of undergraduates perceived loneliness as a significant personal problem.^[17] The creators sought to address critical gaps in prior assessment methods, which often lacked reliability, brevity, or focus on the subjective experience of loneliness rather than objective isolation.^[18] For initial validation, the 20-item scale was administered to undergraduate samples, yielding high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .96) and test-retest reliability (.73 over two months), alongside concurrent validity evidenced by strong correlations with self-reported loneliness and related emotional indicators, such as willingness to volunteer for a campus loneliness clinic.^[1] The scale was first published in the Journal of Personality Assessment later that year, marking its introduction as a key instrument in psychological research.^[1]

Key Revisions and Adaptations

The 1980 revision of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, developed by Daniel Russell, Letitia Anne Peplau, and Carolyn Cutrona, addressed limitations in the original 1978 version by incorporating 10 positively worded items to mitigate acquiescence bias, where respondents might agree with statements regardless of content. This revised 20-item scale balanced negative and positive phrasings to better capture subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation, demonstrating strong concurrent validity through correlations with self-reported loneliness and discriminant validity by distinguishing it from related constructs like social anxiety. In 1996, Russell led the creation of Version 3, published in the Journal of Personality Assessment, refining the scale further to enhance item clarity, internal consistency, and applicability across diverse age groups by eliminating ambiguous or redundant items from prior iterations.^[4] The revision process involved factor analysis on samples including college students, nurses, teachers, and elderly individuals from community and nursing home settings, revealing a unidimensional structure. This version achieved high test-retest reliability (r = 0.73 over 1 year) in the elderly sample and Cronbach's alpha values exceeding 0.90, establishing it as the most enduring form.^[4] Post-1996 adaptations have primarily focused on shortening the scale for large-scale epidemiological research while preserving core psychometric integrity. Cross-cultural validations in non-Western contexts, such as China and Iran, have confirmed its structural validity through confirmatory factor analysis, with adaptations ensuring linguistic equivalence and cultural relevance, such as adjusting for collectivist norms in relational items. No comprehensive overhaul has occurred since 1996. Minor adjustments, including format tweaks for online and mobile administration, have facilitated its integration into digital health assessments without altering core content, maintaining high fidelity in remote data collection.

Structure and Administration

Scale Items and Response Format

The UCLA Loneliness Scale Version 3 consists of 20 self-report items designed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation, with 9 positively worded items reflecting relational closeness and connectedness, and 11 negatively worded items capturing experiences of isolation and disconnection. These items were refined from earlier versions to simplify wording and enhance clarity while maintaining focus on interpersonal themes such as companionship, understanding, and belonging. Respondents rate the frequency with which each statement describes their feelings using a 4-point Likert scale: 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, and 4 = Always. This format emphasizes the temporal aspect of loneliness experiences, allowing participants to indicate how often they encounter these relational states. The items cover key themes of loneliness, including emotional isolation and lack of intimacy. Examples of negatively worded items include: "How often do you feel that you lack companionship?" and "How often do you feel left out?" Positively worded items, which contrast these by describing fulfilling social connections, include: "How often do you feel you can find companionship when you want it?" and "How often do you feel close to people?" Administration is straightforward and self-administered, typically taking 3-5 minutes to complete, and can be conducted via paper-and-pencil, online surveys, or structured interviews, making it adaptable for diverse research and clinical settings.

Scoring and Interpretation

The UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3) consists of 20 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 4 (always). To compute the total score, responses to the nine positively worded items (items 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 16, 19, and 20) must first be reverse-coded (1 becomes 4, 2 becomes 3, 3 becomes 2, and 4 becomes 1) to ensure that higher values consistently indicate greater loneliness across all items. The scores are then summed, yielding a total range of 20 to 80, where lower scores reflect lower levels of loneliness and higher scores indicate greater loneliness.^[19]^[20] Interpretation of total scores typically categorizes loneliness levels based on established thresholds derived from empirical distributions: scores of 20–34 suggest a low degree of loneliness, 35–49 indicate moderate loneliness, 50–64 reflect high loneliness, and 65–80 denote very high or severe loneliness. These categories provide a framework for understanding the intensity of subjective social isolation but are not diagnostic in isolation.^[21]^[22] Normative data for the scale were established primarily from U.S. adult samples, including college students (mean = 45.08, SD = 9.50), nurses (mean = 44.14, SD = 9.52), and elderly individuals (mean = 31.41, SD = 6.92), showing generally positively skewed distributions with lower loneliness reported among older adults. More recent national U.S. surveys report overall means around 44, though adjustments for demographic factors such as age (e.g., lower scores in older cohorts) and cultural context are recommended, as cross-cultural adaptations may yield varying norms due to differences in social norms and reporting styles.^[19]^[23] There is no universal clinical cutoff for the scale, as thresholds depend on context and population; however, scores above 43 are commonly used to identify elevated loneliness, and higher scores are associated with increased risks of depression (correlations typically r > 0.50) and adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease and premature mortality.^[24]^[25]30383-7/fulltext)

Psychometric Properties

Reliability

The UCLA Loneliness Scale demonstrates strong internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from 0.89 to 0.94 across multiple studies, reflecting high interrelatedness among its items.^[4] This level of reliability holds in the scale's unidimensional design, which assesses subjective feelings of loneliness through a single underlying construct.^[4] Test-retest reliability is also robust, with coefficients of 0.73 over a one-month interval in initial validations and approximately 0.70 over one year in longitudinal samples of undergraduates and adults.^[1]^[4] Reliability estimates tend to be higher in diverse adult populations, such as nurses, teachers, and the elderly (alphas around 0.94), compared to student samples (alphas around 0.88).^[4]^[26] Additionally, the scale shows minimal differences in reliability between paper-and-pencil and digital administration modes, with equivalent psychometric performance in comparative studies.^[27] Recent cross-cultural validations in the 2020s have confirmed these patterns, with non-English versions (e.g., Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese) yielding alphas above 0.85 in community and clinical samples.^[28]^[29]^[30]

Validity and Factor Structure

The UCLA Loneliness Scale demonstrates strong construct validity through its consistent associations with theoretically related constructs. For instance, scores on the scale show moderate to strong positive correlations (r = 0.50–0.70) with measures of depression, such as the Beck Depression Inventory, and negative correlations with assessments of social support and interpersonal adequacy.^[4]^[31] These patterns affirm that the scale captures subjective feelings of loneliness as a distinct yet interconnected emotional experience, rather than merely overlapping with affective disorders or relational satisfaction.^[3] Convergent validity is evidenced by the scale's alignment with other subjective loneliness indicators, while discriminant validity highlights its ability to distinguish emotional loneliness from objective social isolation. The scale correlates highly with self-reports of relational deficits but shows low associations (r < 0.30) with metrics of social network size or frequency of interactions, underscoring that it measures perceived isolation rather than mere quantity of contacts.^[4]^[3] Regarding factor structure, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses consistently support a primarily unidimensional model, with a single global factor accounting for the majority of variance in responses (typically 40–50%). The one-factor solution exhibits good model fit in confirmatory analyses, including comparative fit index (CFI) values exceeding 0.90 across diverse samples.^[4] However, minor debates persist, as some studies identify subtle subfactors, such as relational connectedness versus isolated feelings, though these do not substantially alter the overarching unidimensional interpretation.^[15] Recent evaluations from 2022 to 2024 have reinforced the scale's robustness, confirming measurement invariance across age groups, genders, and cultural contexts through multi-group confirmatory factor analyses.^[32] These studies, including cross-cultural adaptations in regions like South Africa and China, uphold the unidimensional structure while noting slight multidimensionality in digital contexts, where factors related to online social experiences may emerge alongside traditional emotional isolation.^[33]^[34]

Applications

Research and Clinical Uses

The UCLA Loneliness Scale has been a cornerstone in loneliness research, serving as the most widely used instrument in the field since its inception. It has been employed in numerous epidemiological studies to link subjective loneliness to adverse health outcomes, such as increased cardiovascular risk. For instance, a prospective cohort study of older women found that higher loneliness scores on the scale were associated with a 27% greater risk of incident cardiovascular disease, independent of traditional risk factors like hypertension and smoking. This application underscores the scale's role in establishing loneliness as a modifiable risk factor comparable to obesity or physical inactivity in public health models.^[11]^[35] In clinical settings, the scale is routinely used for screening individuals at risk for mental health issues, including social anxiety, where elevated scores help identify those needing targeted interventions. Therapists often administer it to assess baseline loneliness before initiating treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which aims to reduce scores by addressing maladaptive thought patterns and enhancing social skills. A meta-analysis of interventions demonstrated that CBT-based approaches significantly lowered loneliness as measured by the UCLA scale, with effect sizes indicating moderate to large improvements in participants' social connectedness. Additionally, the scale's brief versions facilitate ongoing monitoring in therapy, allowing clinicians to track progress against established scoring thresholds, such as scores above 43 indicating high loneliness.^[36]^[37]^[38] The scale featured prominently in the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on the loneliness epidemic, where it was recommended as a validated metric for tracking social disconnection in public health surveillance and policy evaluation.^[25] Adaptations of the scale have also enabled longitudinal research in aging populations, such as a 14-year study of English older adults that used it to examine how persistent high loneliness correlates with accelerated frailty progression over time. In recent digital health trends of the 2020s, researchers have integrated the scale with wearable devices for real-time loneliness monitoring; for example, multi-modal sensing from smartwatches and smartphones has been shown to predict daily fluctuations in scale-derived loneliness scores, supporting just-in-time interventions.^[39]

Prevalence Studies

Studies employing the UCLA Loneliness Scale have consistently estimated global prevalence rates of moderate-to-high loneliness among adults at 20-40%, with meta-analyses reporting pooled figures around 27.6% for older populations across multiple countries.^[40] In the United States, surveys indicate that approximately half of adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness by 2023 (various measures).^[25] These estimates vary by measurement version, with the 3-item short form yielding lower rates (around 25%) compared to the full 20-item scale (up to 59% in some samples).^[41] Demographic patterns revealed by UCLA Loneliness Scale applications show elevated scores among specific groups, including young adults, where post-COVID-19 surges reached approximately 50% reporting moderate-to-high loneliness, particularly among those aged 18-35.^[25] Elderly individuals exhibited prevalence rates of 25-30%, influenced by factors like living arrangements and health status.^[40] Marginalized populations, such as racial/ethnic minorities and those with lower socioeconomic status, consistently scored higher on the scale, reflecting compounded social barriers.^[42] In contrast, married individuals reported significantly lower loneliness levels, with odds ratios indicating reduced risk compared to unmarried peers.^[43] Longitudinal trends tracked via the UCLA Loneliness Scale from 2018 to 2025 demonstrate a marked increase in loneliness, attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic's social disruptions and rising social media use, which exacerbated isolation in multiple cohorts.^[44] The scale featured prominently in World Health Organization reports, highlighting that approximately 1 in 6 people worldwide—equating to over 16%—experienced loneliness during this period.^[45] The scale has informed recent global reports, such as the WHO's 2025 findings on loneliness affecting 1 in 6 people worldwide (2014-2023), emphasizing its role in policy.^[45] Key findings from these prevalence studies underscore an inverse correlation between UCLA Loneliness Scale scores and measures of social connectedness, where stronger social ties predict lower loneliness ratings.^[46] Normative data from 2020s surveys have updated benchmarks, showing mean scores rising post-pandemic (e.g., from 3.63 to 4.37 on the 3-item scale in a U.S. older adult cohort, as of 2020-2021), informing public health interventions.^[47]

Criticisms and Alternatives

Limitations of the Scale

One key limitation of the UCLA Loneliness Scale lies in its unidimensional design, which assumes a single underlying construct of loneliness despite evidence suggesting the phenomenon is multifaceted, encompassing emotional isolation (e.g., lack of intimate relationships) and social isolation (e.g., deficient social networks). Although intended as unidimensional, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses across studies have produced inconsistent results, ranging from one-factor to two- or three-factor solutions, potentially reflecting true dimensions of loneliness rather than mere item wording artifacts; a 2025 analysis further argues that the scale obscures the distinction between subjective loneliness and objective social disconnection, leading to potential misinterpretations.^[48] This lack of consensus has led researchers to advise against deriving subscales from the instrument, as replications are unreliable and may confound interpretations in research or clinical applications.^[49] Cultural biases represent another significant constraint, as the scale was developed and validated primarily on individualistic U.S. college student samples, limiting its applicability in collectivist cultures where social connectedness is emphasized differently. In Asian adaptations, such as those in Japan and Taiwan, internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) has been reported as low as 0.79, indicating reduced reliability compared to Western samples where alphas often exceed 0.90; this drop is attributed to cultural differences in expressing or perceiving loneliness, with collectivist norms potentially suppressing self-reported isolation. Moreover, many cross-cultural validations fail to follow rigorous adaptation guidelines, resulting in scalar non-invariance and questionable validity outside Western contexts.^[30]^[50] The scale's reliance on self-report responses introduces vulnerability to social desirability bias, as individuals may minimize admissions of loneliness due to associated stigma, particularly in settings where emotional vulnerability is discouraged. While Version 3 incorporated a mix of positively and negatively worded items to counteract acquiescence and extreme response biases present in earlier iterations, the overall format remains prone to underreporting or misinterpretation, especially among populations with varying comprehension levels or cultural taboos around solitude. Recent analyses confirm low but statistically significant correlations with social desirability measures, underscoring persistent response distortions.^[3]^[30] Finally, the absence of major revisions since Version 3 in 1996 renders the scale outdated for contemporary assessments, as it predates widespread digital communication and fails to address modern forms of isolation, such as online disconnection or social media-induced exclusion. This gap contributes to underestimation of loneliness in youth and digital-native populations, where virtual interactions play a central role, prompting calls in 2023 reviews for updated instruments incorporating item response theory to better capture evolving social dynamics.^[15]^[7]

Comparisons with Other Measures

The UCLA Loneliness Scale, primarily unidimensional and focusing on subjective feelings of loneliness through 20 items, contrasts with the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale (DJGLS), which adopts a multidimensional approach assessing both emotional isolation (6 items) and social isolation (5 items) in an 11-item format.^[49] While the UCLA Scale provides a global measure of loneliness suitable for broad adult populations, the DJGLS excels in capturing distinct emotional and social dimensions, making it particularly useful for elderly individuals where social network deficiencies are prominent; however, its multidimensionality can complicate interpretation compared to the UCLA's straightforward scoring.^[49] Psychometrically, the DJGLS demonstrates solid reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.84) but limited test-retest data, whereas the UCLA Scale offers higher internal consistency (α = 0.87) and test-retest reliability (r = 0.83), favoring its use in longitudinal studies.^[49] In comparison to the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults-Short (SELSA-S), a 15-item multidimensional instrument with subscales for romantic (5 items), family (5 items), and social/friend (5 items) loneliness—distinguishing emotional and social aspects within specific relationships—the UCLA Scale prioritizes overall subjective loneliness without relational specificity.^[49] The SELSA-S provides greater nuance for research on interpersonal dynamics, such as family emotional isolation, but its subscale scoring is more complex and some items overlap with general social support rather than pure loneliness, potentially reducing its precision in global assessments.^[49] Reliability metrics are comparable, with SELSA-S showing Cronbach's α = 0.85 and test-retest correlations of 0.83–0.91, though the UCLA Scale's unidimensional structure simplifies administration and enhances its applicability in diverse cultural contexts.^[49] Brief alternatives like the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6, 6 items) differ fundamentally from the UCLA Scale by measuring objective social isolation through network size, closeness, and contact frequency rather than subjective loneliness feelings, making the LSNS more structural and less focused on emotional experience.^[51] The UCLA-3, a 3-item abbreviated version, completes in under 1 minute with retained reliability (α ≈ 0.72), offering brevity superior to fuller multidimensional scales like SELSA-S, though it sacrifices depth in subtype analysis.^[49] A more recent alternative, the Multidimensional Loneliness Scale (MLS), developed in 2025, expands on these by assessing multiple dimensions of loneliness in a culturally adapted format (e.g., Peruvian version), aiming to overcome unidimensional limitations for broader applicability.^[52] Overall, the UCLA Scale dominates global surveys (used in 64% of studies) due to its ease and balance of brevity with reliability, while alternatives like DJGLS gain traction in Europe (78% usage there) for deeper multidimensional insights, particularly among older adults.^[49]

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This article is based on two longitudinal studies that investigated the role of social media use in loneliness and psychological distress before and during the ...
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Social Isolation and Loneliness - World Health Organization (WHO)
Social isolation and loneliness are widespread, with around 16% of people worldwide – one in six – experiencing loneliness.WHO Commission on Social... · Advocacy brief · WHO Evidence and Gap MapsMissing: UCLA | Show results with:UCLA
[46]
Relationship of loneliness and social connectedness with...
UCLA Loneliness Scale ... This scale comprises 20 items, which evaluates the one's subjective feelings of loneliness as well as feelings of social isolation.Missing: inverse | Show results with:inverse
[47]
Loneliness and its predictors among older adults prior to and during ...
The proportion of participants reporting feeling lonely was 56.3% (n=1680). Among participants with repeat measures of loneliness (n=516), 35.2% (n=182) ...
[48]
How (Not) to Measure Loneliness: A Review of the Eight Most ...
The original development papers for the CLS give no clear definition of loneliness but describe the loneliness questionnaire as a subjective alternative for ...
[49]
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/17/10816
[50]
what are we measuring? A novel framework for ... - BMJ Open
We present a novel way of classifying and comparing measures of social relationships to help readers interpret the growing literature on loneliness and social ...