Filtering by
- All Subjects: Loneliness
- Creators: Doebbeling, Bradley
This is the first study aimed at understanding the loneliness experiences of community-dwelling Hmong older adults, an ethnic group resettled in the United States as refugees over 40 years ago. A constructivist grounded theory method guided by an intersectionality framework was used to address three aims: 1) to understand the concept of loneliness among community-dwelling Hmong older adults, 2) to explore the premigration, displacement, and postmigration experiences of loneliness among community-dwelling Hmong older adults, and 3) to examine how community-dwelling Hmong older adults cope with loneliness. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with 17 Hmong older adults age 65 and older residing in Sacramento and Fresno, California. Analysis of the data was an iterative process between coding the data, generating focused codes, and connecting the categories to establish a conceptual pattern.
Participants conceptualized loneliness as a negative experience represented through physical and emotional expressions and intensity, which were influenced by an intersectional identity. Factors that influenced their experiences of loneliness in the premigration, displacement, and postmigration phase were discussed as trust, loss, aging-related issues, isolation, sense of community, access to cultural community, instability, violence, and cultural adjustments. Their narratives offered several coping mechanisms including religious and spiritual beliefs, social support, wandering, activity engagement, and control and avoidance. These findings informed a conceptual model of loneliness that incorporated an intersectional identity, influencing factors, and coping mechanisms. Overall, the results provide nuanced cultural meanings and insight into the loneliness experiences of Hmong older adults. Implications for social work research, practice, and policy suggests the need for greater culturally- and linguistically-competent services informed by Hmong older adults.
The purpose of this Honors Thesis was to first, understand the implications of social isolation and loneliness on an individuals’ physical and mental health and second, uncover successful strategies that individuals used to overcome social isolation and loneliness. This thesis used two primary data sets to draw conclusions about individuals’ subjective feelings of loneliness and isolation and to further understand what strategies were used to overcome these feelings. The results from this thesis demonstrated that individuals who successfully avoided feelings of social isolation and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic took up new activities, used strategies to facilitate communication, participated in community engagement, completed acts of service, practiced mindfulness and reflection, and made new connections.
For our thesis, we analyzed a set of data from the on-going longitudinal study, “Aging In the Time of COVID-19” (Guest et al., ongoing) from the Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging at Arizona State University. This study researched how COVID-19 and the resulting physical/social distancing impacted aging individuals' health, wellbeing, and quality-of-life. The survey collected data regarding over 1400 participants’ social connections, health, and experiences during COVID-19. This study gathered information about participants’ comorbid conditions, age, sex, location, etc. We presented this work in the form of a website including the traditional elements of an Honors Thesis as well as a visual essay with the data analysis portion coded with the JavaScript library D3 and a list of resources for our target audience, older adults who are experiencing social isolation and/or loneliness.