SHORT REPORT
Analysis of the psychometric properties of the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale in a Polish adolescent sample
 
More details
Hide details
 
Submission date: 2017-03-21
 
 
Final revision date: 2017-07-12
 
 
Acceptance date: 2017-07-19
 
 
Online publication date: 2017-08-29
 
 
Publication date: 2018-04-18
 
 
Current Issues in Personality Psychology 2018;6(2):164-170
 
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
The current study examines the psychometric properties of the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (R-UCLA): structural validity, reliability and external validity. We conducted a study on a sample of 247 high school students, all aged 16. In order to verify the hypotheses, scales measuring feelings of loneliness, shyness and self-esteem were administered. As a result of confirmatory factor analyses, it was demonstrated that the structure of the R-UCLA is three-factorial, the factors being as follows: (1) intimate others, referring to the feeling of exclusion; (2) social others, referring to the lack of closeness and support in relationships; and (3) belonging and affiliation, referring to the lack of community bonds – all of which are reliable in their measurement, as is the total score of the R-UCLA. Moreover, we demonstrated that the feeling of loneliness is positively related to shyness and negatively related to self-esteem. The obtained results support using the R-UCLA among Polish adolescents.
 
REFERENCES (20)
1.
Austin, B. A. (1983). Factorial Structure of the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Psychological Reports, 53, 883–889. doi: 10.2466/pr0.1983.53.3.883.
 
2.
De Jong-Gierveld, J., & Kamphuis, F. (1985). The development of a Rasch-type loneliness scale. Applied Psychological Measurement, 9, 289–299. doi: 10.1177/014662168500900307.
 
3.
Dill, J. C., & Anderson, C. A. (1999). Loneliness, shyness, and depression: The etiology and interrelationships of everyday problems in living. In T. Joiner & J. C. Coyne (eds.), The interactional nature of depression: Advances in interpersonal approaches (pp. 93–125). Washington: American Psychological Association.
 
4.
Dzwonkowska, I. (2011). Self-compassion as moderator of the effects of global self-esteem on affective functioning of people. Psychologia Społeczna, 6, 67–80.
 
5.
Grygiel, P., Humenny, G., Rebisz, S., Świtaj, P., & Sikorska, J. (2013). Validating the Polish adaptation of the 11-Item De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 29, 129–139. doi: 10.1027/1015-5759/a000130.
 
6.
Hawkley, L. C., Browne, M. W., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2005). How can I connect with thee?: Let me count the ways. Psychological Science, 16, 798–804. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01617.x.
 
7.
Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6, 1–55. doi: 10.1080/10705519909540118.
 
8.
Hu, Y., Jin, Y., Hu, C., & He, H. (2013). Loneliness and their relationship to explicit and implicit self-esteem. Psychology, 4, 455–458. doi: 10.4236/psych.2013.45064.
 
9.
Jackson, T., Fritch, A., Nagasaka, T., & Gunderson, J. (2002). Towards explaining the association between shyness and loneliness: A path analysis with American college students. Social Behavior and Personality, 30, 263–270. doi: 10.2224/sbp.2002.30.3.263.
 
10.
Kwiatkowska, M. M., Kwiatkowska, K., & Rogoza, R. (2016). Polish adaptation of the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness scale and a significance of shyness in the context of personality traits and metatraits. Studia Psychologiczne, 54, 1–17. doi: 10.2478/V1067-010-0156-7.
 
11.
Kwiatkowska, M. M., & Rogoza, R. (2017). A measurement invariance investigation of the differences in shyness between adolescents and adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 116, 331–335. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2017.05.012.
 
12.
Łaguna, M., Lachowicz-Tabaczek, K., & Dzwonkowska, I. (2007). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: Polish adaptation of the scale. Psychologia Społeczna, 2, 164–176.
 
13.
McDonald, R. P. (1999). Test theory: A unified treatment. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
 
14.
Perlman, D., & Peplau, L. A. (1981). Toward a social psychology of loneliness. In S. W. Duck & R. Gilmour (eds.), Personal Relationships 3: Personal Relationships in Disorder. London: Academic Press.
 
15.
Rokach, A., & Neto, F. (2000). Causes of loneliness in adolescence: A cross-cultural study. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 8, 65–80. doi: 10.1080/02673843.2000.9747842.
 
16.
Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, 20–40. doi: 10.1207/s15327752jpa6601_2.
 
17.
Russell, D. W., Peplau, L. A., & Cutrona, C. E. (1980). The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 472–480. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.39.3.472.
 
18.
Russell, D. W., Peplau, L. A., & Ferguson, M. L. (1978). Developing a measure of loneliness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 42, 290–294. doi: 10.1207/s15327752jpa4203_11.
 
19.
Sijtsma, K. (2009). On the use, the misuse, and the very limited usefulness of Cronbach’s alpha. Psychometrika, 74, 107–120. doi: 10.1007/s11336-008-9101-0.
 
20.
Wilson, D., Cutts, J., Lees, I., Mapungwana, S., & Maunganidze, L. (1992). Psychometric properties of the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale and two short-form measures of loneliness in Zimbabwe. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59, 72–81. doi: 10.1207/s15327752jpa5901_7.
 
Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
eISSN:2353-561X
ISSN:2353-4192
Journals System - logo
Scroll to top