Research
Everything the Center has published, most recent first. 257 items.
18 October 2021
The AARP Foundation and Cigna surveys report loneliness prevalence figures roughly twice apart. The gap comes from what each survey asked, not from a change in the underlying reality.
13 September 2021
National loneliness figures collapse widely divergent subgroup rates into a single number. Comparing survey instruments and age breakdowns shows how much that averaging obscures.
7 September 2021
The prevalence and mortality literature on loneliness has produced almost uniformly positive findings. A methods note on what disconfirming evidence would need to show, and why it is hard to find.
4 September 2021
Most claims that loneliness among young adults is rising compare surveys that asked different questions. A handful of series repeated the same instrument over time -- and those are the ones worth reading closely.
16 August 2021
The most widely used loneliness instrument was designed in the late 1970s around assumptions about contact that digital communication has scrambled. A look at what it measures, and what it cannot.
13 July 2021
A systematic review published June 23 finds uniformly positive effects of social prescribing on loneliness, but the design of the underlying studies cannot support the policy weight now resting on them.
21 May 2021
The most-cited prevalence estimate for older adults comes from a 2020 consensus report, but it measures network structure rather than subjective loneliness, has no comparable figure at other ages, and predates the pandemic. What follows from that for screening and policy.
9 May 2021
The claim that loneliness is as harmful as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day is repeated in nearly every account of the topic. The number does not appear in the meta-analysis usually cited for it.
2 May 2021
The Making Caring Common finding that 36% of Americans report serious loneliness rests on a sampling frame and instrument that differ from the academic literature it is often paired with. A close look at what it can and cannot support.
18 April 2021
A proposed mechanism linking the decline of informal gathering spaces to elevated loneliness among 18-25 year olds, and what evidence would be needed to establish it as causal rather than coincidental.
8 April 2021
The two most-cited effect sizes linking social connection to mortality come from meta-analyses of studies conducted mostly before 2010. The gap they leave unaddressed has persisted through a decade of subsequent reviews.
14 March 2021
Widely cited claims that loneliness costs billions of dollars rest on a much thinner evidentiary base than the mortality-risk literature they are often paired with.
20 February 2021
A single statistic from a Harvard survey — 61% of young adults report serious loneliness — is already circulating as settled fact. What the underlying report says is narrower than that.
18 February 2021
A new Harvard survey puts serious loneliness at 36% of Americans and 61% of young adults. The figures are striking, and the reasons to read them carefully are worth stating plainly.
13 February 2021
The National Academies has recommended that health systems routinely screen for social isolation and loneliness. The evidence behind identifying the problem is far stronger than the evidence behind what to do once it is found.
10 January 2021
Most figures on loneliness and isolation in older adults come from single-timepoint surveys and meta-analyses of studies that mix designs. A look at what only a longitudinal study can establish, and why it matters for how these numbers get used.
5 January 2021
Cigna's workplace survey finds 61% of U.S. adults lonely; AARP's national survey of the same period finds one in three. Both are self-report, but they measure different things.