The Measurement of Loneliness: An Obituary (and How to Move On)

The measurement of loneliness, by now, has gone a long road; on its way, different measurement tools have been developed and many important valuable insights have been gained. However, the current practice of measuring loneliness has severe problems, so severe that we declare the measurement of loneliness dead. As main causes of death, we discuss (a) loneliness measures containing items that do not measure loneliness, (b) ambiguous, unclear, and controversial factor structures of current loneliness measures , and (c) the between-person focus of current measures that neglects the subjective nature of loneliness. Furthermore, we argue that (a) consequently adopting an idiographic perspective on the measurement of loneliness, (b) embracing the iterative nature of scale development and refinement, and (c) a consequent application of Item Response Theory may help to move on and substantially improve the measurement of loneliness in the future.