This indicator measures levels of loneliness. Loneliness is the feeling of lacking social connection to others. Importantly, loneliness can be experienced even by people who frequently spend time socialising with others – if they do not feel understood or connected to those people, they can experience loneliness despite being surrounded by people.

However, loneliness is often strongly connected to experiencing social isolation, which means having few social contacts or interactions.

Multiple studies show that experiencing loneliness for an extended period of time is associated with poorer health and wellbeing. A commonly cited statistic is that loneliness can be as harmful to your longevity and health as smoking (e.g. Cacioppo and Patrick 2008). While both loneliness and social isolation are associated with poorer physical health, loneliness is a stronger predictor of psychological wellbeing (mental health and mental illness) than social isolation, while social isolation is a stronger predictor of life expectancy (Hong et al. 2023).

Hong, J.H., Nakamura, J.S., Berkman, L.F., Chen, F.S., Shiba, K., Chen, Y., Kim, E.S. and VanderWeele, T.J., 2023. Are loneliness and social isolation equal threats to health and well-being? An outcome-wide longitudinal approach. SSM-Population Health, 23, p.101459.

Cacioppo, J.T. and Patrick, W., 2008. Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. WW Norton & Company.

Advantages: Loneliness is an important factor affecting a person’s wellbeing, with very strong scientific evidence supporting its direct effect on wellbeing and life outcomes.

Disadvantages: There are few disadvantages to measuring loneliness. However, it is important to distinguish loneliness and social isolation in rural communities. Not all people experiencing social isolation will experience loneliness, and vice versa.

Despite the strong evidence for the impact of loneliness on quality of life and on health outcomes, few surveys in Australia consistently measure loneliness. The exceptions are:

• The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey examines loneliness, with data available for large regions, but not for smaller rural communities
• The Regional Wellbeing Survey measures loneliness, and provides data for smaller rural communities

Loneliness is a subjective experience. As such, it is measured via surveys of residents.  The most common measures used are short questions such as the following:

• How often do you feel lonely
• How often do you feel that you lack companionship?
• How often do you feel left out?
• How often do you feel isolated from others?

Response options are typically Never, Hardly ever, Occasionally/sometimes, Often, All of the time.

The measure above is validated and used in a number of studies, some of which use slightly different variants of the response scale, and not all of which include the first item, but which have all shown good validity (see Hughes et al. 2004, Matthews-Ewald and Zullig 2013, Snape and Martin 2018).

Hughes, M., Waite, L., Hawkley, L., Cacioppo, J. 2004. A Short Scale for Measuring Loneliness in Large Surveys: Results From Two Population-Based Studies. Research on Aging 26(6): 655-672.

Matthews-Ewald, M., Zullig, K. 2013. Evaluating the Performance of a Short Loneliness Scale Among
College Students. Journal of College Student Development 54(1): 105-109

Snape, D. and Martin, G., Measuring loneliness: guidance for use of the national indicators on surveys. Off Natl Stat. 2018; 1–10 [online]