ArticlePsychological medicine2024
Measuring loneliness: a head-to-head psychometric comparison of the 3- and 20-item UCLA Loneliness Scales.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Postpartum Education Via Artificial Intelligence for Recovery and Loneliness (PEARL): A Randomized Controlled Trial
Mental Health of Medical Students in Orleans: a Cohort Study of a New Faculty
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Sensor-Based Technologies for the Detection of Unwanted Loneliness in Older Adults: A Systematic Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- ClassPass Memberships to Improve Well-Being Among Psychiatry Residents: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2026Trial
- Singing for lung health following completion of pulmonary rehabilitation: feasibility of a randomised controlled trial.BMJ open respiratory research · 2026Trial
- Prevalence and correlates of depression among older persons in rural eastern Uganda: a cross-sectional survey.Global health action · 2026Article
- Maternal Loneliness and Technoference During Early Childhood: The Mediating Roles of Nomophobia and Social Media Addiction.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2026Article
- Aging, Mental Health and Ethnic Disparities: Understanding Geriatric Mental Health in Western Nepal.Journal of geriatric psychiatry and neurology · 2026Article
- Association between problematic smartphone use, loneliness, and risk behaviors among high school students in a conflict-affected setting: A cross-sectional study from Palestine.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Exploring the association of poor social support and loneliness with cardiovascular history among lebanese residents: insights into myocardial infarction and stroke: a cross-sectional approach.BMC cardiovascular disorders · 2026Article
- Loneliness in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Multidimensional Determinant of Clinical Outcomes and Disease Management.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Functional Disability and Loneliness Among Clinically Stable Individuals with Schizophrenia: A Cross-sectional Study.Annals of neurosciences · 2026Article
- Loneliness Prevalence and Correlates Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Taiwan: Clinical Utility of Brief Screening Measures.Clinical interventions in aging · 2026Article
- Housing precarity and mental health among shoebox house residents in Hong Kong: latent profile analysis of perceived social support and its associations with loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- The association between internet gaming disorder, depression, and anxiety among Palestinian university students who play internet games in a conflict-affected region.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Suicide prevention in primary health care among socially vulnerable populations: a narrative review.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Clinical relevance of loneliness in the treatment of depression: study protocol for a naturalistic prospective longitudinal study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Loneliness in older women: a multidimensional population-based study of social, health, and life-course factors.Frontiers in aging · 2026Article
- Article
- Longitudinal dynamics of symptom networks in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer undergoing radioactive iodine therapy: a prospective cohort study.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Article
- Effects of college students' physical activity on loneliness: a moderated mediation model.BMC psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDespite the growing interest in the prevalence and consequences of loneliness, the way it is measured still raises a number of questions. In particular, few studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of very short measures of loneliness to standard measures.
methodsWe conducted a large epidemiological study of midwife students (
resultsFirst, as predicted, we found that the two loneliness scales were strongly associated with each other. Second, when using the dimensional scores of the scales, we showed that the internal reliability, convergent-, discriminant-, and known-groups validities were high and of similar magnitude between the UCLA-LS-20 and the UCLA-LS-3. Third, when the scales were dichotomized, the results were more mixed. The sensitivity and/or specificity of the UCLA-LS-3 against the UCLA-LS-20 were systematically below acceptable thresholds, regardless of the dichotomizing process used. In addition, the prevalence of loneliness was strikingly variable as a function of the cut-offs used.
conclusionsOverall, we showed that the UCLA-LS-3 provided an adequate dimensional measure of loneliness that is very similar to the UCLA-LS-20. On the other hand, we were able to highlight more marked differences between the scales when their scores were dichotomized, which has important consequences for studies estimating, for example, the prevalence of loneliness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.