• Wei-Lieh Huang, Chi-Shin Wu, Chia-Ming Yen, Hung-Yeh Chang, Chih-Yuan Yu, Kai-Chieh Chang, Hsin-Shui Chen, Chin-Kai Chang, Juey-Jen Hwang, Su-Hua Huang, Yung-Ming Chen, Bor-Wen Cheng, Min-Hsiu Weng, and Chih-Cheng Hsu.
• Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin Branch, Taiwan; Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Electronic address: weiliehhuang@gmail.com.
• J Formos Med Assoc. 2024 Jul 11.

BackgroundSocial detachment includes the subjective aspect "loneliness" and the objective aspect "social isolation," but tools to assess both dimensions are limited. This study aims to develop a questionnaire, the Social Detachment Questionnaire for Older Population (SDQO), that considers multiple dimensions of social detachment simultaneously.MethodsThe study collected 600 valid samples from individuals aged 55 and above to examine the psychometric properties of the developed SDQO. Item analysis was conducted to assess the performance of each item, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to analyze its initial structure and eliminate less ideal items. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the model fit of the suggested structure by EFA, using different subsamples. Internal consistency, concurrent validity, and other analyses were also performed.ResultsThe original 27-item SDQO was reduced to 17 items after removing 4 questions in item analysis and 6 questions in EFA. The Cronbach's alpha for the 17-item version of SDQO was 0.80. Both EFA and CFA supported its 6-factor structure, with factors identified as community activities, loneliness, personal resources, leisure activities, friendship, and family resources. SDQO also demonstrated expected performance in concurrent validity.ConclusionThe 17-item version of SDQO exhibited good reliability and validity, measuring various aspects of social detachment behavior, feelings, and resources. It holds value for future research applications.Copyright © 2024 Formosan Medical Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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