WWCW Highlight Call: Understanding social isolation and subjective wellbeing across the life course: a project using five British birth cohort studies

社会联系被认为是一种基本的心理需求，社会孤立与一系列负面后果有关，包括心理健康状况较差、认知能力下降和死亡率。最近制定了应对其中一些挑战的政策努力，包括推动了解和减少社会孤立和孤独。现有的文献认为社会孤立是一个人经历的客观特征，它是基于独居、很少有社会关系和很少社交等因素来评估的。另一方面，孤独是对一个人的关系和经历的一种主观评估。尽管人们对政策的兴趣有所增加，但缺乏来自大规模、具有代表性的数据集的经验证据，说明个人一生中经历的社会孤立程度，以及不同年龄和不同世代的社会孤立与福祉之间的联系程度。这项研究建议旨在通过记录关于社会孤立和幸福之间关系的生命历程视角来解决这一差距；并揭示社会孤立和幸福趋势的代际差异。我们将利用五项纵向的英国队列研究，跟踪1946年、1958年、1970年、1989年和2001年出生的儿童，以产生可比较的社会孤立衡量标准，以了解按人生历程和世代划分的模式和趋势。该项目的这一数据密集型方面将产生协调一致的变量，这将成为研究界的重要资源，促进这一领域今后的研究。以前的许多研究都集中在成年后期的社会隔离上，这项拟议的研究将通过考察社会隔离在整个生命过程中的变化来扩展现有的文献，从童年、青春期、成年期早期、中年到老年。之后，我们将调查过去60年来英国的情况是否在几代人之间发生了变化，并调查是否有观察到的差异。由于每一代人面临的风险不同，可能会出现差异，例如，接受高等教育的机会增加、劳动力市场的变化或互联网的接入。这些分析将能够确认在这些国家队列中是否观察到任何差异，如果是，则确认观察到的变化的方向。接下来，我们将考察不同年龄段的社会孤立、孤独和主观幸福感之间的关系。理清社会隔离、幸福感和年龄之间的关系，对于制定针对生命周期的政策干预措施非常重要。为了更详细地了解这些关系，我们将调查男性和女性的社交孤立经历是否有所不同，以及它们与幸福感的性别是否存在差异。同样，我们将根据社会经济优势或劣势来调查社会孤立的经历，并调查它与这些群体的福祉之间的关系。使用孤独感测量工具(如果有)，我们将考察社交孤立和孤独感之间是如何相互关联的。社会孤立和孤独并不是高度相关的，因为它有可能被社会孤立，喜欢与世隔绝，反之，它可能与社会联系在一起，但仍然感到孤独。因此，我们将调查社交孤立和孤独是否分别解释了幸福感的差异。我们还将根据个人是否同时经历这两种情况来研究他们的群体，以帮助理解这些不同的经历组合与不同年龄的主观幸福感之间的关系。

Social connectedness is considered to be a basic psychological need, and social isolation is associated with a range of negative outcomes including poorer mental health, cognitive decline and mortality. Recent policy efforts have been set up to address some of these challenges, including a drive to understand and reduce social isolation and loneliness. The existing literature considers social isolation to be an objective characteristic of someone's experience and it is assessed based on factors such as living alone, having few social relationships and infrequent social contact. Loneliness, on the other hand, is a subjective assessment of one's relationships and experience. Despite this increase in policy interest, there lacks empirical evidence from large scale, representative datasets on the extent of social isolation experienced by individuals through their lives and the extent of the link between social isolation and wellbeing at different ages and in different generations. This research proposal aims to address this gap by documenting the life course perspective on the relationship between social isolation and wellbeing; and uncover generational differences in trends of social isolation and wellbeing. We will make use of five longitudinal British cohort studies following children born in 1946, 1958, 1970, 1989 and 2001 to generate comparable measures of social isolation to understand the patterns and trends by life course and by generation. This data intensive aspect of the project will generate harmonised variables which will be an important resource for the research community facilitating future research in this area. Much of the previous research focuses on social isolation in late adulthood, this proposed research will extend the existing literature by examining how social isolation varies across the whole life course, from childhood, adolescence, early-adulthood, mid-life and older ages. Thereafter we will investigate whether things have changed across generations in the UK over the last 60 years and investigate whether there are any observed differences. Differences might be expected as a result of different exposures by each generation, for example, increased access to higher education, changes in the labour market or access to the internet. These analyses will be able to confirm whether any differences are observed in these national cohorts and if yes, the direction of observed changes. Next, we will examine the relationship between social isolation, loneliness and subjective wellbeing at different ages. Unpacking the relationship between social isolation, wellbeing and age is important for developing life course specific policy interventions. In order to understand these relationships in more detail, we will investigate whether the experiences of social isolation are different for men and women, and whether they are differentially associated with wellbeing by gender. Similarly, we will investigate the experience of social isolation by socio-economic advantage or disadvantage and investigate how it is associated with wellbeing across these groups. Using the loneliness measures (where available) we will examine in what ways social isolation and loneliness are interrelated. Social isolation and loneliness are not highly associated as it is possible to be socially isolated and prefer seclusion and inversely to be socially connected but to still feel lonely. Hence, we will investigate whether social isolation and loneliness separately explain the variation in wellbeing. We will also examine groups of individuals based on whether they are experiencing both, either or neither to help understand the relationships of these different combinations of experience with subjective wellbeing at different ages.