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The Role of School Connectedness and Friend Contact in Adolescent Loneliness, and Implications for Physical Health

Zheng, Yixuan; Panayiotou, Margarita; Currie, Dorothy; Yang, Keming; Bagnall, Charlotte; Qualter, Pamela; Inchley, Joanna

The Role of School Connectedness and Friend Contact in Adolescent Loneliness, and Implications for Physical Health Thumbnail


Authors

Yixuan Zheng

Margarita Panayiotou

Dorothy Currie

Charlotte Bagnall

Pamela Qualter

Joanna Inchley



Abstract

The current study investigated how adolescents’ loneliness relates to school connectedness, classmate support, teacher support, and offline and online communication with friends. We also examined the association between loneliness, physical health, and sleep. Data came from the Scottish Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC). The total sample was 2983 adolescents (F = 1479 [49.6%]) aged 14–17 years (M = 15.66, SD = 0.39) from 117 secondary schools in Scotland. Results showed that (1) higher teacher support, classmate support, and offline contact with friends predicted lower levels of loneliness, (2) online friendship engagement predicted higher levels of loneliness, and (3) poor health and sleep were positively associated with loneliness. The study offers new findings, highlighting the role played by classmates/peers and teachers in reducing loneliness. Supporting previous research, we also found associations between loneliness, poor sleep, and worse physical health.

Citation

Zheng, Y., Panayiotou, M., Currie, D., Yang, K., Bagnall, C., Qualter, P., & Inchley, J. (2024). The Role of School Connectedness and Friend Contact in Adolescent Loneliness, and Implications for Physical Health. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 55, 851–860. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-022-01449-x

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 19, 2022
Online Publication Date Oct 19, 2022
Publication Date 2024-06
Deposit Date Sep 20, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jan 9, 2023
Journal Child Psychiatry & Human Development
Print ISSN 0009-398X
Electronic ISSN 1573-3327
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 55
Pages 851–860
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-022-01449-x
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1191019

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Online first This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.






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