The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A systematic review of longitudinal risk factors for loneliness in older adults
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVES: To effectively reduce loneliness in older adults, interventions should be based on firm evidence regarding risk factors for loneliness in that population. This systematic review aimed to identify, appraise and synthesise longitudinal studies of risk factors for loneliness in older adults. METHODS: = 60+ years at outcome); longitudinal design; study conducted in an OECD country; article published in English in a peer-review journal. Article relevance and quality assessments were made by at least two independent reviewers. RESULTS: The search found 967 unique articles, of which 34 met relevance and quality criteria. The Netherlands and the United States together contributed 19 articles; 17 analysed national samples while 7 studies provided the data for 19 articles. One of two validated scales was used to measure loneliness in 24 articles, although 10 used a single item. A total of 120 unique risk factors for loneliness were examined. Risk factors with relatively consistent associations with loneliness were: not being married/partnered and partner loss; a limited social network; a low level of social activity; poor self-perceived health; and depression/depressed mood and an increase in depression. CONCLUSION: Despite the range of factors examined in the reviewed articles, strong evidence for a longitudinal association with loneliness was found for relatively few, while there were surprising omissions from the factors investigated. Future research should explore longitudinal risk factors for emotional and social loneliness.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: the PRISMA statement
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & for the PRISMA Group (2009) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.b2535 · Cited by 83,823
Liberati, A., Altman, D. G., Tetzlaff, J., Mulrow, C., Gotzsche, P. C., Ioannidis, J. P. A., Clarke, M., Devereaux, P. J., Kleijnen, J., & Moher, D. (2009) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.b2700 · Cited by 17,648
Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691614568352 · Cited by 6,043
Loneliness: the experience of emotional and social isolation
Weiss, R. S. (1974) · Cited by 2,513
Leigh-Hunt, N., Bagguley, D., Bash, K., Turner, V., Turnbull, S., Valtorta, N., & Caan, W. (2017) · Public Health · doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2017.07.035 · Cited by 2,158
A Meta-Analysis of Interventions to Reduce Loneliness
Masi, C. M., Chen, H.-Y., Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2011) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1177/1088868310377394 · Cited by 1,995 · cited 1×
“A similar research limitation has been observed in longitudinal research on interventions to reduce loneliness (Masi, Chen, Hawkley, & Cacioppo, 2011).”
BackgroundSocioemotional selectivity theory and the regulation of emotion in the second half of life
Carstensen, L. L., Fung, H. H., & Charles, S. T. (2003) · Motivation and Emotion · doi:10.1023/a:1024569803230 · Cited by 1,978
Cohort profile: The English longitudinal study of ageing
Steptoe, A., Breeze, E., Banks, J., & Nazroo, J. (2013) · International Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/ije/dys168 · Cited by 1,779
Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., & Thisted, R. A. (2010) · Psychology and Aging · doi:10.1037/a0017216 · Cited by 1,757
Social isolation, loneliness and health in old age: a scoping review
Courtin, E., & Knapp, M. (2017) · Health & Social Care in the Community · doi:10.1111/hsc.12311 · Cited by 1,463
Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1985). The NEO personality inventory manual. Odessa, FL.: Psychological Assessment Resources.
- Lappegård, T., & Veenstra, M. (Eds.). (2010). Life-course, generation and gender. LOGG 2007. Field report of the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey. Oslo: Statistics Norway.
- 10.1207/153248301753225702 · doi:10.1207/153248301753225702 · Paper page
- SBU. (2014). Utvärdering av metoder i hälso- och sjukvården [Assessment of methods in health care]. Stockholm: Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services.
- Victor C. R. Mansfield L. Kay T. Daykin N. Lane J. L. G. D. … Meads C. (2018). An overview of reviews: The effectiveness of interventions to address loneliness at all stages of the life-course. Retrieved from https://whatworkswellbeing.org/resources/tackling-loneliness-review-of-reviews/.
Cited by
Wang, F., Gao, Y., Han, Z., Yu, Y., Long, Z., Jiang, X., Wu, Y., Pei, B., Cao, Y., Ye, J., et al. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01617-6 · Cited by 507
Hoang, P., King, J. A., Moore, S., Moore, K., Reich, K., Sidhu, H., Tan, C. V., Whaley, C., & McMillan, J. (2022) · JAMA Network Open · doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.36676 · Cited by 315
Loneliness across time and space
Luhmann, M., Buecker, S., & Rüsberg, M. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-022-00124-1 · Cited by 197
Associations of loneliness with risk of Alzheimer's disease dementia in the Framingham Heart Study
Akhter‐Khan, S. C., Tao, Q., Ang, T. F. A., Itchapurapu, I. S., Alosco, M. L., Mez, J., Piers, R. J., Steffens, D. C., Au, R., & Qiu, W. Q. (2021) · Alzheimer's & Dementia · doi:10.1002/alz.12327 · Cited by 126
Hajek, A., Volkmar, A., & König, H.-H. (2025) · Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s00127-023-02602-0 · Cited by 39
Metadata
- Authors
- Dahlberg, L., McKee, K. J., Frank, A., & Naseer, M.
- Venue
- Aging & Mental Health
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-02-10
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 225-249
- ISSN
- 1360-7863 (ISSN-L)
- 1364-6915
- OpenAlex
- W3128677302
- Cited by
- 513
- References
- 70
- FWCI
- 8.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- Funders
- Nordisk Ministerråd (18291)
- Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd (2017--00668,2017-00668)
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A systematic review of longitudinal risk factors for loneliness in older adults. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/13607863.2021.1876638
- The paper
- Dahlberg, L., McKee, K. J., Frank, A., & Naseer, M. (2022). A systematic review of longitudinal risk factors for loneliness in older adults. Aging & Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2021.1876638
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.