El objetivo fundamental de esta investigación ha sido tratar de delimitar el constructo soledad. Si bien tradicionalmente en la literatura sobre el tema se ha establecido un paralelismo entre soledad y apoyo social, en tanto que ambos conceptos hacen referencia a las relaciones sociales que mantienen las personas, nuestro principal interés ha sido tratar de poner de manifiesto que la soledad, a pesar de estar relacionada con determinados aspectos del apoyo social, es un fenómeno diferente que hace referencia a aspectos más subjetivos, emocionales, profundos y globales, y que por tanto, tendrá efectos más devastadores sobre la vida de las personas que la falta de apoyo social.
En esta investigación se presentan datos de 786 personas de ambos sexos y diferente edad, nivel educativo, estado civil, etc., que contestaron un cuestionario que incluía la 3a versión de la UCLA Loneliness Scale, la medida de Apoyo Social de Dunkel-Schettery cols. (1986), así como medidas de autoestima y calidad de vida. Los resultados obtenidos apoyaron nuestras predicciones acerca de la especificidad de la experiencia de soledad.
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