Cornwell Erin York, Waite Linda J
Department of Sociology, Cornell University, 336 Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2009 Nov;64 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):i38-46. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbp037. Epub 2009 Jun 9.
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 can 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.
We assess the reliability of the scales using Cronbach's alpha and item-total correlations and perform 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.
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 in multivariate analyses predicting health outcomes.
“全国社会生活、健康与老龄化项目”（NSHAP）数据包含老年人社会联系、社会参与、社会支持和孤独感的多个指标。我们认为，这些指标可以结合起来衡量社会隔离的两个方面：社会脱节（即与他人的物理分离）和感知到的隔离（即孤独感和缺乏社会支持的感觉）。我们使用NSHAP数据创建衡量社会脱节和感知到的隔离的量表，并研究它们在老年人中的分布情况。
我们使用克朗巴哈系数和项目与总分相关性来评估量表的信度，并进行验证性因素分析以检验模型与数据的拟合度。最后，我们检验各亚组间量表均值的差异，以评估老年人中社会脱节和感知到的隔离的分布情况。
我们发现17个指标可合并为两个可靠的量表。社会脱节量表具有双因素结构，包括受限社会网络维度和社会不活动维度。感知到的隔离量表也包括两个维度：缺乏支持和孤独感。我们发现社会脱节在不同年龄组中没有差异，但高龄老人比低龄老人感觉更孤立。健康状况较差的人群中社会脱节和感知到的隔离程度更高。
创建衡量社会脱节和感知到的隔离的量表为利用NSHAP研究中收集的各种社会隔离指标提供了一种方法。虽然社会联系或隔离的个别指标本身很有用，但这些量表提供了简洁的连续变量，涵盖了社会隔离的多个方面，这对于纳入预测健康结果的多变量分析可能特别有用。
