social contact), or the types and amounts of assistance received from others (i.e. social network), frequency of interaction with others (i.e. Loneliness may also be influenced by the number and structure of one’s relationships (i.e. Contextual factors relate to lacking a confidant, relocation to a care facility as well as loss of loved ones due to death, and spending too much time alone or idle, which yields feelings of separation from others.
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Health factors include chronic disease experiences that interfere with functioning, and cognitive decline resulting in communication impairments or inability to remember significant others or the recent interactions with them. The interplay of health and contextual factors puts older adults at risk for loneliness, a negative feeling resulting from a perceived deficit in companionship, quantity or quality in one’s relationships with either an attachment figure or a community. Innovative conceptualizations of intervention targets are needed, such as purposeful activity, that move beyond the current focus on the objective social network as a way to promote social connectedness for older adults. Research to test the divergent theories of why interventions work is needed to advance understanding of intervention mechanisms. Authors held divergent views of why the same type of intervention might impact social connectedness, but social contact was the most frequently conceptualized influencing factor targeted, both within and across intervention types. Of nine intervention types identified, the most frequently described were One-to-One Personal Contact and Group Activity. Strategies described most often were engaging in purposeful activity and maintaining contact with one’s social network. Few focused on non-white participants (4.5%). The studies were often conducted in the United States (38.6%) among community dwelling (54.5%), cognitively intact (31.8%), and female-majority (86.4%) samples. Interventions were described or evaluated in 39 studies, and five studies described strategies to affect loneliness/social connectedness of older adults or their caregivers in a qualitative descriptive study. Analytic techniques included calculating frequencies, manifest content analysis and meta-summary. Data were extracted to describe the interventions and strategies, and the context of the included studies. Standardized inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied, resulting in a set of 44 studies (reported in 54 articles) for further analysis. Six electronic databases were searched from inception in July 2015, resulting in 5530 unique records. MethodsĪ comprehensive scoping review was conducted. The purpose of this review was to map the literature on interventions and strategies to affect loneliness/social connectedness for older adults. The nature of interventions aimed to affect the distinct, subjective concepts of loneliness/social connectedness has not been clearly described.
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Older adults are at risk for loneliness, and interventions to promote social connectedness are needed to directly address this problem.