The Metric Equivalence of the Ucla Loneliness Scale for a Sample of South African Students

Abstract

This article reports on the psychometric properties of the UCLA Loneliness Scale employed with a sample of South African students. Respondents consisted of 659 undergraduate students (39.4% males, 60.6% females) at the University of Western Cape, South Africa. The mean loneliness score for this group was slightly higher than those reported for North American college students, and slightly lower than those reported for Puerto Rican and Iranian students. This finding is consistent with previously reported cross- cultural variability in the experience of loneliness. Size of house- hold was significantly related to loneliness score which would suggest that the family plays a role in the experience of loneliness. The scale demonstrated adequate reliability (coefficient alpha = .81) and factor analysis confirmed the unidimensionality of the scale for this sample. Tests for sex differences indicated that males reported more loneliness than females which are also consistent with previous studies. The obtained results underline the utility of the UCLA Loneliness Scale for use with South African students.

Psychometric Qualities of the UCLA Loneliness Scale-Version 3 as Applied in a Turkish Culture

“…The current results provide a deeper understanding of the multidimensionality of the UCLA LS3 structural validity since there has been a debate in the literature whether the scale has unidimensional or multidimensional structure. In the previous version of the UCLA, 1-factorial (Pretoirus, 1993), 2-factorial (Mahon et al, 1995), 3-factorial (McWhirter, 1990) solutions were tested. By the same token, UCLA LS3's factorial structure was tested by comparing 1-factorial, 2-factorial, 3-factorial solutions (Russell, 1996).…”

“…The NYU Loneliness Scale (Rubenstein & Shaver, 1982); Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (DiTommaso & Spinner, 1993); Loneliness Rating Scale (Scalise, Ginter, & Gerstein, 1984); and Differential Loneliness Scale (Schmidt & Sermat, 1983) are some of the measures assessing loneliness. Among these measures, the University of California, Los Angeles, Loneliness Scale (UCLA LS) (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980;Russell, Peplau, & Ferguson, 1978) is the most frequently used scale in countries that range from Denmark (Lasgaard, 2007); Argentina (Sacchi & Richaud de Minzi, 1997); South Africa (Pretoirus, 1993); Taiwan (Wu & Yao, 2008) to Turkey (Demir, 1989). When the psychometric properties of the scale were tested with Turkish depressive and healthy individuals, the internal consistency (.96) and test-retest reliability (.94 for one-month interval) findings reveal significant results (Demir, 1989).…”

“…This version had satisfactory discriminant validity with the measures of personality, social desirability, and depression (Russell et al, 1980). Additionally, the scale's 1-factorial (Pretoirus, 1993); 2-factorial (positive and negative items, Mahon, Yarcheski, & Yarcheski, 1995); and 3-factorial structure (intimate others, social others, and afilliative environment, McWhirter, 1990; isolation, relational connectedness, collective connectedness, Dussault, Fernet, Austin, & Leroux, 2009) were tested in a wide variety of studies. Hartshorne (1993) compared the 1-factorial, 2-factorial, and 3-factorial structure of the revised UCLA LS.…”

Cigarette Smoking and Indicators of Psychosocial Distress in Southeast Asian and Central-Eastern European Adolescents

“…Scores on this scale range from 20 (not lonely) to 80 (extremely lonely). It has emerged as the most widely accepted scale used to assess loneliness in a wide variety of studies with various populations as well as cross-culturally (Hojat & Crandall, 1989;Neto, 1992;Pretorius, 1993;Schumaker & Shea, 1993). Psychometric analyses of the UCLA scale have shown it to be a valid and highly reliable measure of loneliness across varied populations.…”

Psychometric analysis of the Malay version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8) and a comparison of loneliness among sojourning and non-sojourning Malaysian students

“…Indeed, the ULS revisions and short forms have been translated and validated in many different countries in Europe (Anderson & Malikioski-Loizos, 1992;Dö ring & Bortz, 1993;Lasgaard, 2006;Neto, 1992;Ruchkin, Eisemann, & Hägloff, 1999), North America ( de Grâce, Joshi, & Pelletier, 1993), Africa (Pretoirus, 1993;Wilson et al, 1992), the Middle East (Hojat, 1982;Uruk & Demir, 2003) and the Far East (Wu & Yao, 2008). To date, however, no scale is available for the measurement of loneliness among Malay-speaking populations, which mirrors the lack of both indigenous and translated psychological scales in Malaysia (see Kim, Baba, Abdullah, & Zumbo, 2004).…”