Premium
Empirical measurement of social isolation in relation to mental disorders of the elderly
Author(s) -
Sosna U.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
acta psychiatrica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.849
H-Index - 146
eISSN - 1600-0447
pISSN - 0001-690X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1980.tb07694.x
Subject(s) - social isolation , psychology , alienation , isolation (microbiology) , reliability (semiconductor) , field (mathematics) , clinical psychology , relation (database) , prestige , social psychology , applied psychology , psychiatry , computer science , data mining , power (physics) , linguistics , physics , philosophy , mathematics , political science , law , pure mathematics , microbiology and biotechnology , biology , quantum mechanics
An interview procedure for assessing social isolation is described, which is currently being used in a psychogeriatric field‐study in Mannheim. The interview generates scores corresponding to three main aspects of social isolation: (1) infrequency of social contacts; (2) lack of help and support provided by social relationships; (3) alienation from group norms. Two indices of social class, based on occupational prestige, are also used. In an inter‐rater‐reliability study based on 42 joint‐interviews, high levels of reliability were found with respect to all these five indices. In a preliminary analysis of data from the current field‐study, inter‐correlation between the individual indices was found to be generally low. A first step towards validation of the three indices of social isolation yielded positive results. The findings are discussed in relation to the generic concept of “social isolation” and also to possible further applications of this research technique.