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The problem
Intervention: None tested; this is an observational study examining natural variation in loneliness
Who it was tested with: U.S. adolescents aged 15.28 years at baseline (nationally representative cohort), followed to ages 28.17 and 37.20 years.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"Using regression models, we evaluated if an increase in loneliness over 1 year (between Wave I, 1994-1995 and Wave II, 1996) was associated with worse health/well-being outcomes 11.37 years later (in Wave IV, 2008) or 20.64 years later (in Wave V, 2016-2018)." This longitudinal design with long follow-up periods allows examination of whether adolescent loneliness predicts adult outcomes, though causality cannot be confirmed without experimental intervention.
This is an observational study that cannot establish causation. Analyses across 41 outcomes increase the risk of finding spurious associations by chance. Attrition from Wave I to Wave V may introduce bias.
Across countries and designs
27 studies · 24 countries
