Running head: LONELINESS IN COLLEGE STUDENTS 1

Loneliness in College Students

Gabrielle Noland

Loras College
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Abstract

In college there are groups of individuals who often find themselves feeling alone or isolated and

there are others who feel as though they have great support systems. But, many of the students

who report having great support systems may not actually feel that way. The main question is,

how lonely do students on campus actually feel? Is everyone satisfied with their social

relationships or are they secretly dissatisfied with their social relationships? To test how students

feel about their social relationships, select students were chosen to take the Differential

Loneliness Scale. By using this scale, we can determine how a select group of students feel

towards their own social relationships and determine what types of relationships they are

dissatisfied with and if it is a common issue among students.

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Loneliness in College Students

Loneliness is a feeling of sadness due to the lack of company. Although loneliness has

recently been recognized as a major social problem, research into its causes and consequences is

still hard to find and is generally unrelated to any major body of theory or methodology (Schmidt

& Sermat, 1983). The nature of this construct comes from the two characteristics of experiencing

loneliness. First, loneliness is an aversive experience, similar to other negative affective states

such as depression or anxiety. Secondly, research has shown that loneliness is distinct from

social isolation and reflects an individual's subjective perception of deficiencies in his or her

network of social relationships, (Russell, Cutrona, Rose, & Yurko, 1984). When measuring

loneliness, we have to measure it on an emotional scale as well as a social scale. There are

various types of loneliness that help us understand an individual’s emotional and social scale of

relationships. These types of loneliness refer to one’s sexual/romantic relationships, family

relationships, friendships, and relationships within the community. The Differential Loneliness

Scale measures social and emotional loneliness, students' affective and behavioral reactions to

loneliness, students' social relationships, and their judgments of the degree to which their

relationships satisfy them. In this particular case, college students are the main focus because

loneliness can be common when transitioning into a new part of your life and being away from

home. Establishing social relationships is vital when developing and transitioning into young

adulthood. In a study conducted by Nikitin and Freund (2017), they investigated the role of

social motives in college students’ mastery of the transition of moving out of a parental home

and adjusting to the transition where loneliness was an indicator of a poor transition. They found

that students with strong social approach motivation reported stable and low levels of loneliness,

whereas students with strong social avoidance motivation reported high levels of loneliness
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(Nikitin & Freund, 2017). Based on this, I believe that college students will not be lonely,

because in college we tend to find our lifelong friends through our discovery of who we are and

our own paths of life.

Method

Participants

In the study, 44 participants were used. The participants of the study were students who

are currently attending Loras College and were selected by using a convenience sampling. The

survey was given to those who were readily available to take the survey as well as willing to take

the survey.

Materials

The scale that was used in this study was called the Differential Loneliness Scale. This

scale measures one’s subjective sense of lacking satisfaction with a variety of social relationship

and it measures the difference between what someone believes is the type of relationship they

would like to have versus the type of relationship that they currently have (Schmidt & Sermat,

1983). The relationships that were measured were romantic or sexual relationships (R/S),

friendships (FR), family relationships (FAM), and relationships with the community (GR). There

were five questions about romantic/sexual relationships, seven questions about friendships, five

questions about family relationships, and six questions about an individual’s relationship with

the community. The scale is a 23 item dichotomous scale where the options were either true or

false. The range of scores were from zero to one. If a question expressed loneliness and you

answered true, you would receive one point. A question that expressed loneliness would be:

“Few of my friends understand me the way I want to be understood.” If the question did not

express loneliness and you answered true, you would receive zero points. An example of a
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question that does not express loneliness would be: “I know people in my community who

understand and share my views and beliefs.” If a question did not apply to you, you would

answer false. An example of a question that may not apply to everyone would be: “I have a lover

or spouse (boyfriend girlfriend husband or wife) with whom I can discuss my important

problems and worries.” As stated previously, the scale has 23 items. However, the survey

originally had 20 items. To add more depth to the scale, three items were added that related to a

person’s demographic or directly asked about their social relationships and feelings towards

loneliness. These three items included: “No one really knows me well”, “I do not feel alone”,

and “I often feel left out due to my ethnicity”. When scoring the test, individuals with high

scores have a higher indication of loneliness in their lives and dissatisfaction with their social

relationships. Those who have a low score are more satisfied with their social relationships and

loneliness is not a prominent factor in their lives.

Procedure

The Differential Loneliness Scale was administered to 44 participants that attend Loras

College. The participants were chosen by using a convenience sample, meaning they were

chosen if they were present, available, and willing to take the survey. After completion of the

survey, I would number their survey and input the data into an SPSS file. If they answered true

on a question that expressed loneliness, I would add one point to their score. If they answered

true for a question that did not express loneliness, I would add zero points to their score. Their

scores were then totaled to assess their loneliness and satisfaction levels towards their social

relationships. The higher the score, the lonelier the individual felt and the more dissatisfied they

were with their social relationships. The total number of items was 23, therefore they could score
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a maximum of 23 points. If the participant scored a sixteen or higher, then they would be

categorized as either lonely or dissatisfied with their social relationships.

Results

To find the average score students were scoring, the mean of the total amount of scores

was calculated and is shown in Figure 5. The average scores showed that most people had scored

less than half of the maximum score you could receive (M = 10.55, SD = 3.501). This shows that

participants scored a relatively low score on the Differential Loneliness Scale. For the

romantic/sexual subscale, the mean score for the participants was 2.57 (SD = 2.71), which is

shown in Figure 4. The subscale that measured an individuals’ friendships had a higher mean

score than the other subscales with mean score of 3.35 (SD = 0.838), which is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows the measurements for family relationships are relatively low (M = 2.45, SD =

1.77). Relationships within the community also showed to have relatively low scores (M = 2.20,

SD = .59), as shown in Figure 3. However, the Cronbach’s Alpha was below .75. Table 1 shows

the items total statistics and how each item either adds to or subtracts from the Cronbach’s Alpha

and how deleting the item would affect the Cronbach’s Alpha. Table 2 shows us the Cronbach’s

Alpha that was calculated from the total scores of all of the participants was .564. Earlier I

mentioned that three items were added to either cover a demographic or for a more straight-

forward answer. However, Table 3 shows that by deleting these three items our Cronbach’s data

would increase to a total of .632 out of 20 items. However, no items were deleted from the

results.

Discussion

Based on the research articles, loneliness is less common among college students. This is

believed because, most students tend to discover their likes and dislikes and who they truly are
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when coming to college. However, some students feel left out or lonely due to many different

factors. These factors include leaving friends behind in their hometown, being separated from

their family, or that they are at a sense loss for who they are. Despite these factors loneliness can

be less common, because people can also discover life-long friends through college. The results

obtained were reflective of this hypothesis. The scores indicated that loneliness was not a

prominent factor in most students’ lives and most students are satisfied with their social

relationships. Even the subscales did not indicate any dissatisfaction among social relationships

in many students. However, the calculations of the Cronbach’s Alpha show that the Differential

Loneliness scale was not reliable. The score for Cronbach’s Alpha was .564 which is extremely

low and shows that it is not reliable since it is not above a .75. This low alpha shows that the

assumptions of the study were not met. This could be due to there not being a larger amount of

questions or there being untrustworthy results.

Some limitations and problems in this study include the sample size. There were not

enough students to get an accurate overall reading of college students’ satisfaction. The

convenience sample could have also hurt the data and limited it as well, seeing as Loras College

students were the only students who were surveyed. Another issue was that many of the

participants were unhappy while taking the test. When administering the test, many of the

participants would express disdain towards it. I believe this is because the word ‘loneliness’ has a

negative connotation to it. People may not want to face the issue or not want others to know that

they feel that way.

In the future, I would widen my sample size to create a larger sample size as well as

getting a larger representation among college students by giving the tests to students from

various colleges. I would also use a simple sampling technique when choosing participants so
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that the data is not biased towards a certain group or that it only focuses on a particular type of

students. This would also spread the demographics in the study. While this study focuses on

loneliness and individuals’ feelings towards their social relationships, there could be more

studies done to further examine what causes loneliness and if other factors influence loneliness.

For the future, loneliness could be measured in students with clinical depression versus students

who have not been diagnosed with clinical depression. This could help dictate if depression is an

indicator of loneliness or if loneliness leads to depression. Another study that could be done

could focus more on one’s demographic. One example of this would be how lonely and

dissatisfied students of color are with their social relationships versus Caucasian students’

satisfaction level with social relationships on campus. In conclusion, the results have shown that

loneliness and dissatisfaction is not common among college students and supports the hypothesis

that loneliness is less common among college students. However, the study shows that it is not

very reliable so further studies need to be conducted to truly find out college students’

satisfaction level with social relationships.

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References

De Jong-Gierveld, J. (1987). Developing and testing a model of loneliness. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 119-128.

doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.119

Nikitin, J., & Freund, A. M. (2017). Social motives predict loneliness during a developmental

transition. Swiss Journal of Psychology/Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für

Psychologie/Revue Suisse De Psychologie, 76(4), 145-153.

doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1024/1421-0185/a000201

Russell, D., Cutrona, C. E., Rose, J., & Yurko, K. (1984). Social and emotional loneliness: An

examination of weiss's typology of loneliness. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 46(6), 1313-1321. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.loras.edu/10.1037/0022-

3514.46.6.1313

Schmidt, N. & Sermat, V. (1983). Measuring loneliness in different relationships. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 44(5), 1038-1047.

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Figure 1

This is the subscale of friendship and shows the mean level of satisfaction in terms of the

participants’ friendship.
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Figure 2

This is the subscale for family relationships and shows the mean level of social satisfaction for

the participant.
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Figure 3

This is the subscale for relationships within the community and shows the mean level of

satisfaction for the participant.

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Figure 4

This is the subscale for romantic/sexual relationships and shows the mean level of satisfaction

for the participant.

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Figure 5

This figure shows the total score of all the participants along with the mean score.
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Table 1
Item-Total Statistics

Scale Mean if Item Scale Variance if Item Corrected Item-Total Cronbach's Alpha if
Deleted Deleted Correlation Item Deleted

q1 9.2045 6.771 .022 .568

q2 9.6136 5.126 .648 .454
q3 9.9773 6.441 .153 .556
q4 10.0909 6.643 .164 .556
q5 10.0455 6.416 .247 .545
q6 9.6591 5.114 .655 .452
q7 9.2273 6.598 .122 .559
q8 9.9773 6.813 -.044 .583
q9 10.1136 6.987 -.182 .577
q10 9.2727 6.622 .069 .566
q11 9.8636 6.307 .157 .556
q12 9.2500 6.564 .120 .559
q13 9.9091 7.201 -.227 .614
q14 10.0227 6.581 .110 .561
q15 9.2045 6.585 .164 .555
q16 9.8864 6.289 .175 .553
q17 9.8864 5.824 .402 .513
q18 9.5909 5.457 .491 .489
q19 9.6136 5.033 .695 .443
q20 9.2273 6.970 -.124 .585
q21 10.0455 6.742 .025 .569
q22 9.2955 7.097 -.187 .601
q23 10.0227 7.139 -.220 .599
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Table 2

Cronbach's Alpha N of Items

.564 23

Table 3

Cronbach's Alpha N of Items

.632 20