Authors Johanna Takács takacs.johanna@semmelweis.hu
Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8709-8826 Zsolt Bálint Katona Physical Education and Sports Centre, Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9280-4628 Ferenc Ihász Doctoral School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0213-2237 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5708/EJMH.19.2024.0034 Keywords: loneliness, adolescence, validity, reliability, UCLA Loneliness Scale Abstract

Introduction: Loneliness has been considered a major public health and policy concern, with substantial physical and mental health impacts. The University of California and Los Angeles Loneliness Scale (UCLA-LS) is one of the most widely used scales for measuring loneliness but it does not have robust psychometric properties among adolescents.

Aims: To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Hungarian UCLA-LS among adolescents.

Methods: The sample includes a total of 2508 students, 57.3% females, aged between 14 and 21 years. Studying psychometric properties, internal reliability and criterion-related validity were measured. The sample was randomly divided into two parts to examine the factorial structure: one part was used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the other was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Results: The UCLA-LS showed good internal consistency. Its total score and the single-item measure showed a small correlation, and also indicated a significant moderate association with hopelessness and self-reported well-being. Based on the EFA, we identified two factors with 51.7% of the total variance explained. In the CFA, the two-factor model demonstrated a good fit.

Conclusions: The findings suggested that the Hungarian UCLA-LS can be a reliable and valid tool for adolescents to measure some dimensions of loneliness. We confirmed the non-normal, relatively skewed distribution of the scale. We can conclude that the UCLA-LS measures a trait characteristic of loneliness. In the adolescent population, it is recommended to use further measures of loneliness to gain more information about the frequency and nature of the multi-faceted mental representation of loneliness.