IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v77y2022i7pe167-e178..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

COVID-19 Social Distancing Measures and Loneliness Among Older Adults

Author

Listed:
  • Eun Young Choi
  • Mateo P Farina
  • Qiao Wu
  • Jennifer Ailshire

Abstract

ObjectivesIn response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, older adults are advised to follow social distancing measures to prevent infection. However, such measures may increase the risk of loneliness. The current study aimed to investigate (a) whether social distancing measures, particularly limiting close social interactions, are associated with loneliness among older adults, and (b) whether the association between social distancing measures and loneliness is moderated by sociodemographic characteristics.MethodData were from the fourth wave (April 29 to May 26, 2020) of the nationally representative Understanding America Study COVID-19 Survey. We used data on adults 50 years or older (N = 3,253). Logistic regression models of loneliness were performed. Five indicators of social distancing measures were considered: (a) avoiding public spaces, gatherings, or crowds; (b) canceling or postponing social activities; (c) social visits; (d) no close contact (within 6 feet) with people living together; and (e) with people not living together.ResultsCancelling or postponing social activities and avoiding close contact with people living together were associated with 33% (odds ratio [OR] = 1.33, confidence interval [CI] = 1.06−1.68, p

Suggested Citation

  • Eun Young Choi & Mateo P Farina & Qiao Wu & Jennifer Ailshire, 2022. "COVID-19 Social Distancing Measures and Loneliness Among Older Adults," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(7), pages 167-178.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:7:p:e167-e178.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kong, Nancy & Lam, Jack, 2022. "Physical Isolation and Loneliness: Evidence from COVID Lockdowns in Australia," IZA Discussion Papers 15720, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Barjaková, Martina & Garnero, Andrea & d’Hombres, Béatrice, 2023. "Risk factors for loneliness: A literature review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 334(C).
    3. Hung Viet Nguyen & Haewon Byeon, 2022. "Explainable Deep-Learning-Based Depression Modeling of Elderly Community after COVID-19 Pandemic," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(23), pages 1-10, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:7:p:e167-e178.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.