Trajectories of Early Adolescent Loneliness: Implications for Physical Health and Sleep
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Trajectories of Early Adolescent Loneliness: Implications for Physical Health and Sleep Alice M. Eccles
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Pamela Qualter2 Margarita Panayiotou2 Ruth Hurley1 Michel Boivin3 Richard E. Tremblay4 ●
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© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The current study examines the relationship between prolonged loneliness, physical health, and sleep among young adolescents (10–13 years; N = 1214; 53% girls). Loneliness was measured at 10, 12 and 13 years of age along with parentreported health and sleep outcomes. Using growth mixture modelling, 6 distinct trajectories were identified: ‘low increasing to high loneliness’ (n = 23, 2%), ‘high reducing loneliness’ (n = 28, 3%), ‘medium stable loneliness’ (n = 60, 5%), ‘medium reducing loneliness’ (n = 185, 15%), ‘low increasing to medium loneliness’ (n = 165, 14%), and ‘low stable loneliness’ (n = 743, 61%). Further analyses found non-significant differences between the loneliness trajectories and parent-report health and sleep outcomes including visits to health professionals, perceived general health, and sleep quality. The current study offers an important contribution to the literature on loneliness and health. Results show that the relationship may not be evident in early adolescence when parent reports of children’s health are used. The current study highlights the importance of informant choice when reporting health. The implications of the findings for future empirical work are discussed. Keywords Loneliness Health Adolescent Longitudinal Sleep ●
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Highlights Six distinct trajectories of loneliness were identified in a large, representative sample. ● Novel examination of loneliness and parent-reported sleep and health outcomes. ● Highlights the importance of measurement and informant choice for future work. ●
Loneliness is a negative emotional state caused by a discrepancy between a person’s desired and actual social relationships (Peplau and Perlman 1982). Loneliness is related, but distinct from social isolation (Smith and Victor 2019); it is characterised by dissatisfaction with current
Supplementary Information The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01804-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users. * Alice M. Eccles [email protected] 1
School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancashire, UK
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Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, UK
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Université Laval, ,Québec QC G1V 0A6, Canada
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The University of Montreal, Québec, Canada
relationships (Cacioppo and Cacioppo 2014) and a feeling of emotional or physical disconnection from others (Qualter et al. 2015). It involves uncomfortable feelings, including sadness, which people try to alleviate quickly by reconnecting with others. Among adults, those feelings contribute to reductions in well-being, which for those who experience loneliness frequently contributes to lower reports of quality of life, and poorer overall physical a
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