The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on older adults’ loneliness: Evidence from high-frequency panel data in Austria
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Abstract
BACKGROUND
It is unclear how strong and long lasting the effects of (recurring) COVID-19 restrictions are on older adults’ loneliness.
METHODS
469 retired older Austrians (60+) provided 9,732 repeated observations of loneliness across 30 waves of the Austrian Corona Panel Project between March 2020 and March 2022. Ordinal mixed regression models were used to estimate the effect of the strictness of COVID-19 restrictions (stringency index, range=0-100) on older adult’s loneliness.
RESULTS
The proportion of older adults who reported to be often lonely correlated (r=0.45) with the stringency index over time: both peaked during lock-downs (stringency index=82, often lonely=10-13%) and were lowest during the summer of 2020 (stringency index=36, often lonely=4-6%). Results from regression models indicate, that when the stringency index increased, loneliness also increased. In turn, as COVID-19 restrictions loosened, levels of loneliness decreased again. Older adults who lived alone were more affected in terms of loneliness by COVID-19 restriction measures compared to those living with others.
CONCLUSIONS
More stringent COVID-19 restrictions were associated with an increased in (situational) loneliness among older adults in Austria, and this effect was stronger among those who lived alone. Efforts should be made to enable older adults, in particular those who live alone, to have save in-person contact during periods of strict pandemic restriction measures.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.15.21267860: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite a number of strengths (high frequency panel data, fine-grained measure of restric-tions, appropriate statistical model for categorical longitudinal data), there are also several limitations to this study. First, we lacked a pre-pandemic baseline of loneliness (without restrictions) for comparison. Second, loneliness was measured with a direct, single item: Although frequently used and often highly correlated with established …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.15.21267860: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite a number of strengths (high frequency panel data, fine-grained measure of restric-tions, appropriate statistical model for categorical longitudinal data), there are also several limitations to this study. First, we lacked a pre-pandemic baseline of loneliness (without restrictions) for comparison. Second, loneliness was measured with a direct, single item: Although frequently used and often highly correlated with established multiple-item scales, single items are less reliable and may lead to underestimation due to the negative connotations of the term ‘loneliness.’ Third, it is unlikely that the sample is representative for the population of older adults with regard to loneliness. Older adults, particularly the oldest old and institutionalized individuals, and those with a low level of education – all of which are more likely to be lonely (Cudjoe et al., 2020; Steptoe et al., 2013), particularly during the current pandemic – are difficult to recruit for online interviews (Kelfve et al., 2020). Despite the use of demographic weights, these limitations likely resulted in an underestimation of the prevalence of loneliness, which may also down-bias our SI effect estimates. In conclusion, we found that pandemic restrictions lead to situational loneliness among older adults, particularly among those who lived alone.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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