Psychometric analysis of the short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8) in Taiwanese undergraduate students
Introduction
Research on the phenomenon of loneliness has advanced for the last 30 years (Weiss, 1973, Peplau and Perlman, 1982). In the literature, loneliness plays an important role in investigating the psychological process of human feelings and behaviors. Many studies indicated that loneliness has an influential effect on health (e.g., Cacioppo et al., 2002), social anxiety (e.g., Jones, Rose, & Russell, 1990), psychopathology (e.g., Solomon, Waysman, & Mikulincer, 1990), and even the behavior on the Internet (e.g., Moody, 2001, Morahan-Martin, 1999). However, when conducting empirical studies on loneliness, an adequate measure of loneliness is required. This measurement should capture the meaning of loneliness with a solid operational definition.
Among the empirical studies, the UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS, Russell, Peplau, & Ferguson, 1978; Revised ULS version, Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980; ULS version 3, Russell, 1996) is the most commonly used self-report loneliness instrument (Russell, 1996). It was developed to assess subjective feelings of loneliness or social isolation. However, because the scale has 20 items, participants may feel burdened when answering the questionnaire. Hays and DiMatteo, 1987, Russell et al., 1980 developed short-forms of the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Both of the short-forms were derived from the Revised ULS version (R-ULS, Russell et al., 1980).
Russell et al. (1980) short-form scale, the ULS-4, has just 4 items. They were selected according to regression analysis, in which the 4 items were the best subset in predicting the self-labeling loneliness index consisting of 6 items, such as “During the past two weeks, how lonely have you felt?”. Hays and DiMatteo (1987) short-form scale, the ULS-8, has 8 items. These items were selected according to an exploratory factor analysis result, in which 8 items had a substantial load on the first factor.
Hays and DiMatteo, 1987, Wilson et al., 1992 had compared the two short-form scales with the R-ULS. Their results revealed that the ULS-8 is a better substitute for the R-ULS than the ULS-4 in three aspects. First, the correlation between the ULS-8 and R-ULS (r = 0.91, Hays & DiMatteo, 1987; r = 0.82 to 0.87, Wilson et al., 1992) was higher than the correlation between the ULS-4 and R-ULS (r = 0.88, Hays & DiMatteo, 1987; r = 0.69 to 0.74, Wilson et al., 1992). Second, the internal reliability (coefficient α) of the ULS-8 (α = 0.84, Hays & DiMatteo, 1987; r = 0.56–0.60, Wilson et al., 1992) was higher than that of the ULS-4 (α = 0.63, Hays & DiMatteo, 1987; r = 0.31–0.45, Wilson et al., 1992). Third, the correlations between the ULS-8 and other related measures, such as social anxiety, alienation, satisfaction with friends, sex life, family, and self, were similar to the correlations between the R-ULS and these measures, but higher than those of the ULS-4 and these measures (Hays & DiMatteo, 1987). In addition, Wiseman, Guttfreund, and Lurie (1995) showed that the ULS-8 was positively correlated with depression. These findings were consistent with the theoretical relations of loneliness. Thus, the existing findings suggested that ULS-8 was a better substitute for the R-ULS than the ULS-4.
The purpose of this study was to validate the ULS-8 with a sample of Chinese individuals in Taiwan, because no short-form version of the ULS was validated on Chinese samples. In addition, the most important reason was that a short-form scale can facilitate researchers to conduct a large-scale survey using only several items to measure loneliness. For example, Academia Sinica conducts the Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS) every year. The TSCS is a national survey, which contains many questionnaires assessing various constructs within a specific topic of the year. In order to assess as many constructs as possible, items in the full version of a standard measurement cannot all be included in the survey. Researchers in the survey committee have to abbreviate the length of questionnaires. As a result, validating the ULS-8 on Chinese people makes a practical contribution in a large-scale survey when loneliness is one of target constructs.
In this study, the factor structure of ULS-8 was examined first using confirmatory factor analysis. Second, correlation analyses were conducted to examine whether the ULS-8 has hypothetical relations with subjective well-being, social support, and adult attachment for investigating the validity of the ULS-8. These three constructs were selected because of their reliable relations with loneliness in the existing literature. Regarding subjective well-being, many studies indicated that people with higher loneliness would have lower subjective well-being (e.g., DiTommaso et al., 2004, Goodwin et al., 2001, Kahn et al., 2003, Neto, 1995). Studies also showed that loneliness was negatively correlated with social support (e.g., Davis et al., 1998, Jackson et al., 2002, Kahn et al., 2003, Russell, 1996). Finally, according to adult attachment studies, insecure attachment tendency, such as anxiety and avoidant attachment, had a positive relationship with loneliness (e.g., DiTommaso et al., 2004, DiTommaso et al., 2003, Florian et al., 1995, Man and Hamid, 1998). Therefore, it is expected that the ULS-8 has negative relations with subjective well-being, and social support, and has positive relations with insecure attachment tendency.
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
A total of 130 National Taiwan University (NTU) undergraduate students participated in this study to get extra credits in the course of introductory psychology. Fifty-eight of the subjects were male (Mean age = 20.20, SD = 1.49) and 72 of the subjects were female (Mean age = 20.24, SD = 2.97). Information of this study was posted on the bulletin for psychological studies. Participants who were interested in this study signed their names on a sheet which indicated the time and place for participation.
Confirmatory factor analysis of ULS-8
Prior to confirmatory factor analysis, Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of each item on the ULS-8, including the mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis.
Table 2 presents unstandardized and standardized estimates of the single-factor model. The parameters in the model were significant. Although the χ2 test rejected the model (χ2(20) = 36.13, p < .05), values of various fit indices were adequate (NFI = .90; NNFI = .94; CFI = .95; MFI = .94; GFI = .94; AGFI = .89; RMSEA = .08; RMR = .03),
Discussion
The UCLA Loneliness Scale is a widely used measure of loneliness. In this study, by validating a short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8) in Taiwan we can show that the ULS-8 is an adequate short-form measure of loneliness. On the confirmatory factor analysis result, the one-factor model with substantial loadings on each item reveals that the 8 items are homogeneous when measuring loneliness. Although 2 items (“I am an outgoing person” and “People are around me but not with me”) have lower
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by National Science Council (NSC 92-2320-B-002-172). We also acknowledge Cheryl Sheridan for her comments on the manuscript.
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