A Guide to Measuring Loneliness for Community Organisations

This Guide is part of Ending Loneliness Together’s Measurement Outcomes Framework series. This is Guide one of three.

Ending Loneliness Together has released its first guide for community organisations looking to evaluate their programs or activities designed to reduce loneliness.

“This Guide came about in conversation with community organisations. We were constantly being asked questions about how services best go about measuring loneliness, including how they evaluate their services and ways to distinguish between loneliness and social isolation”, said Ending Loneliness Together Vice Chair and Deputy Scientific Chair, Professor Jo Badcock.

“By measuring loneliness at the start and at the end of your service, you will be able to evaluate whether the levels of loneliness in your service users have changed or not”.

“I am really pleased to announce the release of this guide. I hope you will find the measures useful, and that we can work together to learn what works to reduce loneliness across Australia”, Professor Badcock said.

This guide provides practical and validated information and tips about which measures to use to evaluate your service, including two brief and valid measures of loneliness that we recommend you use. By measuring loneliness, you will be able to produce clear and accurate evidence of what works, and what does not, in order to make informed decisions for your service and service users.