Authors: Uniting Communities
Overview
Social isolation can be marked by objective factors that include living alone, having few social
network ties and infrequent social contact (Green et al., 2001; Holt-Lunstad et. al., 2015). People
who have poor or limited social contact are often considered ‘at risk’ of social isolation; however,
an individual may have a small social network and experience no loneliness or have a large social network and still feel lonely.
Studies that differentiate between objective and subjective loneliness constructs (e.g. Cattan &
White, 1998; Hall & Havens, 2001; van Baarsen et al., 2001) have defined social isolation as an
objective measure of social interaction, and social and emotional loneliness as the subjective
expression of dissatisfaction with a low number of social contacts. Other studies have combined
loneliness constructs into a single definition. The study by Gardner and colleagues (1999), for
example, defined people as socially isolated if they had poor or limited contact with others, they
perceived this level of contact as inadequate, and/or that the limited contact had adverse
personal consequences for them. Flood (2005) developed an Index of Social Support that did
not differentiate between objective and subjective social and emotional loneliness. After
conducting a factor analysis, he did not consider the 10-item scale collected by the Household
Income and Labour Dynamics of Australia (HILDA) survey could be meaningfully divided, noting
some of the items captured at least two different loneliness constructs.
There is some recent evidence, at least among older adults, that social and emotional isolation
should be regarded as distinct dimensions of loneliness (Valtorta, 2016a; van Baarsen et al.,
2001) as different types of social isolation may have different effects on our health. However, in
their large meta-analysis of existing literature, Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2015) found little
difference in subjective and objective measures of social isolation and loneliness in predicting
poor outcomes, our ultimate aim for this research in the future. Similarly, Andersson (1998)
notes that while the strongest predictors may be subjective, there are objective indicators, such
as living alone, that are also strongly associated with loneliness.
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