Capturing loneliness across youth: Co-production of a new developmentally sensitive scale

孤独是指当一个人对他们拥有的社会关系的数量或社会关系的质量不满意时产生的不舒服的感觉。孤独不等同于社会孤立：一个人即使被其他人包围，也会感到与社会脱节，反之，一个人可能会感到孤独和满足。在过去的十年里，孤独已经成为一个公共卫生问题。新冠肺炎疫情及其不同阶段的封锁和社会限制加剧了这种担忧。这是令人担忧的，因为从长远来看，孤独可能与较差的精神健康有关，这会影响其他健康结果、生活质量、卫生保健服务的使用和就业。因此，在孤独与这些更糟糕的结果联系在一起之前，找到帮助人们管理孤独的方法是至关重要的。过去的研究着眼于孤独发生的原因以及如何管理它，主要集中在老年人身上，尽管孤独在年轻人中也很常见。青年孤独被忽视的一个关键原因是，我们目前关于青年孤独的问卷在捕捉年轻人真实经历方面存在局限性。现有的衡量标准在很大程度上是在没有年轻人参与的情况下制定的，因此可能不包括现实生活中的特征和孤独的特征。耻辱也会影响对这些措施的报道。我们建议通过一个严格的发展过程来开发和评估一份关于青年孤独的新问卷。我们将邀请10-24岁的年轻人告诉我们他们的孤独经历。对于这一阶段和其他衡量标准的发展阶段，我们的目标是招募在性别、种族、性取向和家庭收入方面不同，并有一系列孤独经历的年轻人。一半的参与者将来自伦敦，另一半来自曼彻斯特，以确保结果适用于英国两个不同的地区。我们将使用各种方法鼓励小组讨论，包括结构化的主题指南和不同的创造性艺术活动，使我们能够更好地了解孤独对年轻人意味着什么。从这些讨论中，我们将创建反映孤独的问卷项目，因为从青春期早期到成年早期，年轻人都经历过孤独。这些项目将根据经验发送给学术专家和专家，以征求他们对澄清和缩小题库的反馈。下一步，我们将要求年轻人的试点样本完成这些项目的评级，同时大声表达他们对每个项目的想法(例如，这是否反映出孤独)。在以问卷形式向1800名年轻人分发之前，这些反馈将被用来改进这些项目，在3个月内分两次发放。这些数据将使我们能够进行正式的统计分析，看看这些项目是否适合在一起，并共同反映孤独。我们致力于在年轻人中发展这一措施。该提案的申请者中有两个是年轻人。我们将为来自伦敦和曼彻斯特边缘化背景的年轻人提供获得报酬和培训合作研究人员的机会。与麦克潘基金会合作，我们将创建一个年轻人咨询小组，为我们的研究和沟通战略提供建议和监督。我们还将在学术受众之外交流我们的工作，为那些有兴趣将我们的问卷应用于他们的客户群体或评估他们组织内的孤独干预和计划的人组织研讨会。通过结束孤独运动，我们将组织圆桌讨论，为从业者和政策制定者制作信息图表和动画。为了确保年轻人在交流调查结果方面有发言权，我们将与人民宫项目合作，提供高调的多受众公共活动，这也将有助于全国范围内关于青年孤独的对话。

Loneliness is the uncomfortable feelings that arise when a person is not satisfied with the number of social contacts they have or the quality of their social relationships. Loneliness is not the same as social isolation: a person can feel socially disconnected even when they are surrounded by others, conversely, a person can be alone and feel contented. Over the last decade, loneliness has become a public health concern. The COVID-19 pandemic with its various phases of lockdown and social restrictions has only magnified that concern. This is worrying because loneliness can be linked to poorer mental health in the long term, which affects other health outcomes, quality of life, use of health care services, and employment. It is, therefore, crucial to develop ways to help people to manage loneliness before it becomes linked with these poorer outcomes. Past research has looked at the why loneliness occurs and how it can be managed, primarily focussing on older adults, even though loneliness is as common in young people. A key reason for why youth loneliness has been neglected is that our current questionnaires of youth loneliness are limited in capturing the authentic experiences of young people. Existing measures were developed largely without input from young people so they may not include real-life features and characteristics of loneliness. Stigma could also affect reporting on these measures.We propose to develop and assess a new questionnaire of youth loneliness through a rigorous development process. We will invite young people aged 10-24 years to tell us about their experiences of loneliness. For this and other stages of measure development, we aim to recruit young people who are diverse in gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and family income, and with a range of loneliness experiences. Half of the participants will be from London and the other half, Manchester, to ensure the results are applicable to two distinct UK regions. We will use methods to encourage group discussion using both structured topic guides and different creative art activities that enable us to gain a better picture of what loneliness means to young people. From these discussions, we will create questionnaire items that reflect loneliness as it is experienced across youth from early adolescence to early adulthood. These items will be sent out to academic experts and experts by experience for feedback on their clarify and narrow down the item pool. Next, we will ask a pilot sample of young people to complete ratings of these items, while verbalising their thoughts about each item (e.g., does it reflect loneliness) out loud. This feedback will be used to refine the items before they are distributed as a questionnaire to 1800 young people, twice over a 3-month period. This data will allow us to carry out formal statistical analysis to see if the items fit well together and collectively reflect loneliness. We are committed to developing this measure with young people. Two of the proposal's applicants are young people. We will offer young people from marginalised backgrounds in London and Manchester the opportunity to be paid and trained co-researchers. Working with the McPin Foundation, we will create a Young Person Advisory Group to give advice and provide oversight of our research and communication strategy. We will also communicate our work beyond academic audiences, organising workshops for those interested in applying our questionnaire to their client groups or to evaluate loneliness interventions and programs within their organisations. With the Campaign to End Loneliness, we will organise roundtable discussions, producing infographics and animations for practitioners and policy-makers. To ensure young people have a voice in communicating findings, we will work with People's Palace Projects to deliver high-profile multi-audience public events, which will also contribute to national conversations about youth loneliness.