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Responsiveness to self‐report questions about loneliness: a comparison of mainstream and intellectual disability‐specific instruments
Author(s) -
Stancliffe R. J.,
Wilson N. J.,
Bigby C.,
Balandin S.,
Craig D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1111/jir.12024
Subject(s) - loneliness , intellectual disability , readability , psychology , mainstream , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , computer science , theology , programming language , philosophy
Abstract Background We compared responsiveness to two self‐report assessments of loneliness: the UCLA L oneliness S cale ( UCLALS ) designed for the general community, and the M odified W orker L oneliness Q uestionnaire ( MWLQ ) designed for people with intellectual disability ( ID ). Methods Participants were 56 older adults with disability – 40 individuals with ID and 16 without ID . They were individually assessed on the MWLQ and the UCLALS . The difficulty of the items in both scales was evaluated in relation to readability, features of question wording, question length and response format. Results The UCLALS was more difficult than the MWLQ on each of the difficulty dimensions assessed. There was significantly greater responsiveness to the MWLQ than the UCLALS , especially among people with ID . Conclusions To enable as many people with ID as possible express their views on loneliness, the ID ‐specific MWLQ is a much better choice. However, this choice comes at the cost of ready comparison to loneliness data for the general community, which is available for widely used assessments such as the UCLALS .