{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/gscqv_v1","title":"One Lone Item: Assessing Loneliness with a Single-Item Direct Measure","abstract":"Across the most-used loneliness scales, direct wordings are avoided due to concerns they induce biased responses. These efforts have undermined scales’ abilities to accurately assess loneliness. We test and validate the One-item Loneliness scale (1iL; \"I often feel lonely\"), showing using multi-rater data (Ntotal = 2,638 people) that item directness does not induce unique biases. The 1iL had retest reliability superior to some short multi-item scales (rtt = .74) and comparable cross-rater agreement (rSOA = .52). We find near-perfect convergence with the Three-Item Loneliness Scale (rtrue = .95), the most popular short measure of loneliness, and the Emotional subscale of the De Jong Gierveld (DJG; rtrue = .97). Crucially, the 1iL demonstrated clear discriminant validity from the DJG's Social subscale, suggesting that ‘social loneliness’ is in fact distinct from loneliness. Contrary to popular belief, loneliness can be assessed directly, and is psychologically distinct from judgements about one’s social circle.","journal":"Goldsmiths (University of London)","year":2025,"id":558537,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.958,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1458951,"name":"Yavor Dragostinov","orcid":"0000-0002-8090-9614","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1458952,"name":"Ross David Stewart","orcid":"0000-0003-1984-3879","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1255755,"name":"René Mõttus","orcid":"0000-0002-6403-5224","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1176502,"name":"Andrew Cooper","orcid":"0000-0002-5897-2107","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228674,"name":"Elliot M. Tucker–Drob","orcid":"0000-0001-5599-6237","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1458950,"name":"Paddy Maher","orcid":"0000-0003-4354-3550","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:55:25.969263Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}