Interdisciplinary Study of Loneliness- with Evaluation of Social Contacts as a Means towards Improving Competence in Old Age

Loneliness has been shown to be a crucial variable with regard to, for example, psychosomatic symptoms, depression and use of services (Weeks et al. 1980; Berg et al. 1981). Loneliness is seen as a subjective state to be distinguished from the objective states social isolation and aloneness. This subjective state has been measured with single-item questions and with scales (de Jong-Gierveld 1969; Belcher 1973; Russel et al. 1980). The answers to a single-item question about loneliness in three different Swedish studies are illustrated in Table 1. The samples were representative of people, 70 years old, in the city of Goteborg (H70) and of people, 60 years and over, (SOU 1977:98) and between 55 and 74 years of age (SCB/LA) in the whole of Sweden. As can be seen from the table most respondents do not report feelings of loneliness. The highest percentage of 'Yes' answers 39.8 was found in the most recent survey (SCB/LA). Despite this there is no justification for interpreting the data as indicating increasing loneliness over the years. The populations were different and H70 and SOU were accomplished by interviews and SCB/LA mainly by a mailed questionnaire; we also have to take into account the risk of sampling