ABSTRACT The revised version of the UCLA-Loneliness Scale has been widely used to investigate the effect of pet ownership on human loneliness. This paper reports three tests of its efficacy for this purpose: 1) a qualitative evaluation of the 20 UCLA-LS items, which concluded that only 6/20 items were likely to tap differences in loneliness due to direct effects of pet ownership, acquisition or separation; 2) a quantitative evaluation of pet-and-loneliness (n = 16) and loneliness (n = 13) researchers’ judgements of how pet owners and non-pet owners might answer each individual item of the UCLA-LS, which suggested that 11 to 13/20 UCLA-LS items might tap differences in loneliness; and 3) a quantitative reanalysis of six datasets, from five earlier studies that had used the UCLA-LS to investigate the effect of pet ownership, acquisition, or separation on loneliness, which concluded that 6/20 items tapped small differences due to pet ownership, but only in 2/6 datasets. Overall, it was found that the efficacy of the UCLA-LS for quantifying effects of pet ownership, acquisition, or separation on human loneliness may be lacking. It is recommended that an instrument specifically for this purpose is developed or that researchers consider using single-item direct measures.

中文翻译：

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宠物与孤独：检验流行测量仪器的功效

摘要 加州大学洛杉矶分校孤独量表的修订版已被广泛用于研究养宠物对人类孤独感的影响。本文报告了其为此目的的三项功效测试：1) 对 20 个 UCLA-LS 项目的定性评估，得出的结论是，由于宠物所有权、获得或分离；2) 宠物和孤独感（n = 16）和孤独感（n = 13）的定量评估研究人员对宠物主人和非宠物主人可能如何回答 UCLA-LS 的每个单独项目的判断，这表明 11 13/20 UCLA-LS 项目可能会挖掘孤独感的差异；3) 对六个数据集的定量再分析，来自五项早期研究，这些研究使用 UCLA-LS 来调查宠物所有权、获得、或对孤独的分离，得出的结论是 6/20 项由于宠物所有权而产生了微小差异，但仅在 2/6 数据集中。总体而言，研究发现 UCLA-LS 可能缺乏量化宠物所有权、获得或分离对人类孤独感的影响的功效。建议开发专门用于此目的的工具或研究人员考虑使用单项直接测量。