The Development of a Rasch-Type Loneliness Scale

Abstract

This paper describes an attempt to construct a measuring instrument for loneliness that meets the cri teria of a Rasch scale. Rasch (1960, 1966) proposed a latent trait model for the unidimensional scaling of di chotomous items that does not suffer from the inade quacies of classical approaches. The resulting Rasch scale of this study, which is based on data from 1,201 employed, disabled, and jobless adults, consists of five positive and six negative items. The positive items assess feelings of belongingness, whereas the negative items apply to three separate aspects of miss ing relationships. The techniques for testing the as sumptions underlying the Rasch model are compared with their counterparts from classical test theory, and the implications for the methodology of scale con struction are discussed.