Scientific background: Loneliness

About this test

The UCLA Loneliness Scale was originally developed in 1978 by Russell, Peplau, and Ferguson, and revised by Daniel Russell into the third version used here in 1996. It's the most widely used research instrument in the world for measuring subjective loneliness and shows very good internal consistency across numerous studies (Cronbach's alpha usually above .90). Importantly: the scale measures the subjective feeling of loneliness, not the objective number of social contacts -- you can feel lonely in a crowd, and be alone without feeling lonely. The bands used here are based on the reference values reported in the original study (Russell, 1996, Table 2) for two adult samples using the full 20-item scale (college students, N=487, M=40.08, SD=9.50; nursing staff, N=305, M=40.14, SD=9.52): the "average" range corresponds to roughly one standard deviation around that pooled mean (M≈40.1, SD≈9.5). The original study does not define a formal clinical cutoff -- the scale is meant to be interpreted dimensionally, not categorically.

Dimensions

Sources & license

• Russell, D. W. (1996). UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity, and factor structure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(1), 20–40.

  No formal permission is required to use the UCLA Loneliness Scale; citing the original source is expected. This is well-established practice -- the scale has been freely reproduced for decades in academic compendia with no fee or permission process -- though unlike some other instruments here, no single explicit statement from the author addressing commercial use was found; treat this as reliably free for non-commercial self-assessment use. Item wording and reverse-scored items were verified verbatim against independent academic reproductions of the scale. The scoring bands were derived from the means/standard deviations reported in Table 2 of this study (see scientific background above) and are not officially published clinical cutoffs.