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Loneliness among dementia caregivers: evaluation of the psychometric properties and cutoff score of the Three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale

2025-04-07Journal article Open access
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datacite.subject.fosCiências Médicas::Ciências da Saúde
datacite.subject.sdg03:Saúde de Qualidade
datacite.subject.sdg04:Educação de Qualidade
datacite.subject.sdg17:Parcerias para a Implementação dos Objetivos
dc.contributor.authorAli, Amira Mohammed
dc.contributor.authorAl-Dossary, Saeed A.
dc.contributor.authorLaranjeira, Carlos
dc.contributor.authorSelim, Abeer
dc.contributor.authorHallit, Souheil
dc.contributor.authorAlkhamees, Abdulmajeed A.
dc.contributor.authorAljubilah, Aljawharah Fahad
dc.contributor.authorAljaberi, Musheer A.
dc.contributor.authorAlzeiby, Ebtesam Abdullah
dc.contributor.authorPakai, Annamaria
dc.contributor.authorKhatatbeh, Haitham
dc.date.accessioned2025-09-01T11:49:22Z
dc.date.available2025-09-01T11:49:22Z
dc.date.issued2025-04-07
dc.descriptionAcknowledgments The Researchers would like to thank the Deanship of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Qassim University for financial support (QU-APC-2025).
dc.descriptionArticle number: 1526569
dc.descriptionSupplementary material: The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1526569/full#supplementary-material
dc.description.abstractIntroduction: Dementia is a chronic progressive syndrome, with an entire loss of function in the late stages. The care of this demanding condition is primarily provided by family members, who often suffer from chronic burnout, distress, and loneliness. This instrumental study aimed to examine the factor structure, reliability, convergent validity, criterion validity, and cutoff scores of a short loneliness measure: the Three-Item version of the University of California, Los Angeles, Loneliness Scale (UCLALS3) in a convenience sample of dementia family caregivers (N = 571, mean age = 53 ±12 years, 81.6% females). Methods: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the structure of the UCLALS3 while receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve, including caregiving burden and emotional distress as outcomes, was used to examine its cutoff. Results: One factor accounted for 79.0% of the variance in the UCLALS3; it was perfectly invariant across genders but variant at the metric level across countries. The scale had adequate internal consistency (alpha = 0.87), high item-total correlations (0.69 - 0.79), reduced alpha if item deleted (0.77 - 0.86), and strong positive correlations with caregiving burden and psychological distress scores (r = 0.57 & 0.74, p values = 0.01). Percentile scores and the ROC curve suggested two cutoffs (≥6 and ≥6.5), which classified 59.3 and 59.4% of the participants as having higher levels of loneliness-comparable to global levels of loneliness among informal caregivers. The Mann-Whitney test revealed significantly high levels of caregiving burden and distress in caregivers scoring ≥6.5 on the UCLALS3. Conclusion: The UCLALS3 is a valid short scale; its cutoff ≥6.5 may flag major clinically relevant symptoms in dementia caregivers, highlighting the need for tailored interventions that boost caregivers' individual perception of social relationships. More investigations are needed to confirm UCLALS3 invariance across countries.eng
dc.description.sponsorshipFunding details Details about financial support for research, including funding sources and grant numbers as provided in academic publications.
dc.description.sponsorshipFunding sponsor Deanship of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Qassim University - QU-APC-2025
dc.description.sponsorshipFunding text The Researchers would like to thank the Deanship of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Qassim University for financial support (QU-APC-2025)
dc.identifier.citationAli AM, Al-Dossary SA, Laranjeira C, Selim A, Hallit S, Alkhamees AA, Aljubilah AF, Aljaberi MA, Alzeiby EA, Pakai A, Khatatbeh H. Loneliness among dementia caregivers: evaluation of the psychometric properties and cutoff score of the Three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale. Front Psychiatry. 2025 Apr 7;16:1526569. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1526569. PMID: 40259973; PMCID: PMC12010107.
dc.identifier.doi10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1526569
dc.identifier.eissn1664-1078
dc.identifier.issn16640640
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/13940
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyes
dc.publisherFrontiers Media
dc.relation.hasversionhttps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1526569/full
dc.relation.ispartofFrontiers in Psychiatry
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectThree-item version of the University of California Los Angeles Loneliness Scale (UCLALS3)/loneliness
dc.subjectcaregiving burden/burnout/the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI)
dc.subjectcutoff score/receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis
dc.subjectfactor structure/psychometric
dc.subjectinformal/family caregivers
dc.subjectolder adults/old age/elders/elderly
dc.subjectpsychological distress/depression anxiety stress scale 8-items
dc.titleLoneliness among dementia caregivers: evaluation of the psychometric properties and cutoff score of the Three-item UCLA Loneliness Scaleeng
dc.typejournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.titleFrontiers in Psychiatry
oaire.citation.volume16
oaire.versionhttp://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85
person.familyNameLaranjeira
person.givenNameCarlos
person.identifier.orcid0000-0003-1080-9535
person.identifier.scopus-author-id22957802900
relation.isAuthorOfPublication7c2157d8-cac9-4004-9438-e92fec260842
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery7c2157d8-cac9-4004-9438-e92fec260842

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