Do middle-aged and older people underreport loneliness? experimental evidence from the Netherlands.

ABSTRACT: Despite the growing acknowledgment of the importance of loneliness among older individuals, questionnaire length constraints may hinder the inclusion of common multi-item loneliness scales in surveys. Direct, single-item loneliness measures are a practical alternative, but scholars have expressed concerns that such measures may lead to underreporting. Our aim was to test whether such reservations are justified. We conducted a preregistered list experiment among 2,553 people aged 50 + who participated in the Dutch Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. The list experiment method has been developed to unobtrusively gather sensitive information. We compared the list experiment estimate of the prevalence of frequent loneliness with the corresponding direct question

SUBMITTER: van den Broek T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11456021 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature