Frontiers in Psychiatry, Год журнала: 2025, Номер 16

Опубликована: Апрель 7, 2025

Introduction Dementia is a chronic progressive syndrome, with an entire loss of function in the late stages. The care this demanding condition primarily provided by family members, who often suffer from burnout, distress, and loneliness. This instrumental study aimed to examine factor structure, reliability, convergent validity, criterion cutoff scores short loneliness measure: Three-Item version University California, Los Angeles, Loneliness Scale (UCLALS3) convenience sample dementia caregivers (N = 571, mean age 53 ±12 years, 81.6% females). Methods Exploratory confirmatory analyses were used structure UCLALS3 while receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve, including caregiving burden emotional distress as outcomes, was its cutoff. Results One accounted for 79.0% variance UCLALS3; it perfectly invariant across genders but variant at metric level countries. scale had adequate internal consistency (alpha 0.87), high item-total correlations (0.69 – 0.79), reduced alpha if item deleted (0.77 0.86), strong positive psychological (r 0.57 & 0.74, p values 0.01). Percentile ROC curve suggested two cutoffs (≥6 ≥6.5), which classified 59.3 59.4% participants having higher levels loneliness—comparable global among informal caregivers. Mann-Whitney test revealed significantly scoring ≥6.5 on UCLALS3. Conclusion valid scale; may flag major clinically relevant symptoms caregivers, highlighting need tailored interventions that boost caregivers’ individual perception social relationships. More investigations are needed confirm invariance

Язык: Английский