Measuring Social Isolation Among Older Adults Using Multiple Indicators From the NSHAP Study
Measuring Social Isolation Among Older Adults Using Multiple Indicators From the NSHAP Study
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DOI：
10.1093/geronb/gbp037
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发表时间：
2009-11-01
影响因子：
6.2
通讯作者：
Walte, Linda J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cornwell, Erin York;Walte, Linda J.
目标。国民社会生活。健康和老龄化项目（NSHAP）的数据包含老年人的社会联系、社会参与、社会支持和孤独的多个指标。我们建议将这些指标结合起来衡量社会孤立的两个方面：社会脱节（即与他人的身体隔离）和感知孤立(即……感到孤独和缺乏社会支持)。我们使用NSHAP数据来创建衡量社会脱节和感知孤立的量表，并检查它们在老年人中的分布。我们使用Cronbach's alpha和项目-总量相关性来评估量表的可靠性，并通过验证性因子分析来根据数据测试模型。最后，我们测试了不同亚组间量表均值的差异，以评估老年人社会脱节和感知孤立的分布。我们发现17个指标组合成两个可靠的量表。社会脱节量表具有双因素结构，包括受限制的社会网络维度和不活跃的社会活动维度。感知孤立量表还包括两个维度：缺乏支持和孤独。我们发现，社会脱节在不同年龄组之间并不存在差异，但老年人比年轻人感到更孤立。在那些健康状况较差的人中，社会脱节和感知孤立更严重。创建衡量社会脱节和感知孤立的量表提供了一种利用NSHAP研究中收集的各种社会孤立指标的方法。虽然社会联系或孤立的个别指标本身是有用的，但这些量表提供了简洁、连续的变量，说明了社会孤立的各个方面，这对于预测健康结果的包容性多变量分析可能特别有用。
Objectives. The National Social Life. Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) data contain multiple indicators of social connectedness, social participation, social support, and loneliness among older adults. We suggest that these indicators call be combined to measure two aspects of social isolation: social disconnectedness (i.e., physical separation from others) and perceived isolation (i.e.. feelings of loneliness and a lack of social support). We use the NSHAP data to create scales measuring social disconnectedness and perceived isolation and examine their distribution among older adults.Methods. We assess the reliability of the scales using Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlations and perforin confirmatory factor analysis to test the model against the data. Finally, we test differences in scale means across subgroups to assess the distribution of social disconnectedness and perceived isolation among older adults.Results. We find that 17 indicators combine into two reliable scales. The social disconnectedness scale has a two-factor structure, including the restricted social network dimension and the social inactivity dimension. The perceived isolation scale also comprises two dimensions: lack of support and loneliness. We find that social disconnectedness does not vary across age groups, but the oldest old feel more isolated than the young old. Social disconnectedness and perceived isolation are greater among those who have worse health.Discussion. The creation of scales measuring social disconnectedness and perceived isolation provides, one way to utilize the wide variety of indicators of social isolation collected in the NSHAP study. Although individual indicators of social connectedness or isolation are useful in their own right, these scales provide parsimonious, continuous variables that account for a variety of aspects of social isolation, which may be especially useful for inclusion ill multivariate analyses predicting health outcomes.