Decreasing Loneliness in Older Adults (I-SOCIAL)

Increasing Social Competence and Social Integration of Older Adults Experiencing Loneliness

The purposes of this study are: (1) decrease loneliness and social isolation and increase social competence and social integration of older adults experiencing loneliness; (2) examine an intervention process grounded in a theoretical model that was developed in a previous study. The intervention process is tailored to the participants' barriers and abilities, and includes up to 10 personal meetings with an activities counselor and several group meetings.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Loneliness; Social Isolation
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: I-SOCIAL intervention

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 74
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Israel
  • Tel-Aviv, Israel, 69978
    • Tel-Aviv University

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 65 years and older (OLDER_ADULT)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• age 65 or over
• residing in the Tel Aviv region

Exclusion Criteria:

• having known mental illness including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and dementia

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: TREATMENT
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: SINGLE

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
EXPERIMENTAL: I-SOCIAL intervention; Participants in this group will have up to 10 personal meetings with activities counselors and several group meetings.	Behavioral: I-SOCIAL intervention; The I-SOCIAL intervention is based on findings from Cohen-Mansfield and Parpura-Gill (2007), which highlighted the important role of barriers in contributing to loneliness in older persons. These barriers include a perceived lack of opportunities for social contacts, low social self-efficacy, and health and mobility difficulties. The intervention includes: (1) identifying the barriers for the specific person; (2) up to 10 meetings with an activities counselor. The meetings include discussions concerning options for social contacts and use of techniques and resources to tackle the barriers; and (3) group meetings of participants and the activities counselors in order to provide a concrete social event and as a venue to discuss barriers and ways to address them.
NO_INTERVENTION: Control group; Participants in this group will not have meetings with the activities counselors, and will not take part in the group meetings.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in Loneliness	Loneliness will be assessed via several measures: (a) Frequency of loneliness will be measured via one item ("How often would you say you feel lonely?"; (Mullins, Woodland, & Putnam, 1990) on a 6-point scale from "never" (1) to "several times an hour" (6); (b) The UCLA Loneliness Scale- 8 items (ULS-8; (Hays & DiMatteo, 1987). Each item is rated on a 5-point scale from "not at all" (1) to "to a great extent" (5), with a higher score indicating more loneliness. Based on experience from another study (Cohen-Mansfield et al., 2013) one item ("I am unhappy being so withdrawn") was replaced with two items ("I feel physically distant from other people"; "I feel emotionally distant from other people).	Participants will be assessed before and after the intervention, an expected average of 6 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Tel Aviv University
• Collaborators: Ministry for Senior Citizens, Israel
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Jiska Cohen-Mansfiels, Professor, Tel Aviv University

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: March 1, 2013
• Primary Completion (ACTUAL): December 1, 2016
• Study Completion (ACTUAL): December 1, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 22, 2013
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 25, 2013
• First Posted (ESTIMATE): April 30, 2013

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (ACTUAL): October 31, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 30, 2019
• Last Verified: October 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Depression; Loneliness; Older adults; Social competence; Social isolation; Social integration
• Other Study ID Numbers: 300009673

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: UNDECIDED