THE TURKISH SHORT VERSION OF THE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LONELINESS SCALE FOR ADULTS (SELSA-S): INITIAL DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION

Abstract

The initial psychometric evaluation of the Turkish adaptation of the short version of the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S; DiTommaso, Brannen, & Best, 2004) is described. The SELSA-S was designed to measure social and emotional (family and romantic) loneliness (DiTommaso, Brannen, & Best, 2004; DiTommaso & Spinner, 1993). After translating the SELSA-S into Turkish both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on samples of graduate (N = 326) and undergraduate students (N = 226). In addition, test-retest reliability was assessed using a sample of undergraduate students (N = 50). Results showed that the factor structure of the Turkish version of the SELSA-S was largely similar to the original one. Finally, each subscale demonstrated high internal consistency, and as predicted was correlated with theoretically related loneliness measures and other relevant constructs, along with displaying temporal stability. Test-retest reliability coefficients for the social, family and romantic subscales were .88, .83 and .91, respectively. Thus, initial results indicate that the scores of the Turkish version of the SELSA-S are reliable and valid for a multidimensional measure of loneliness.