Exploring child and youth understanding of loneliness through qualitative insights and evaluating loneliness measures considering those lived experiences.

The overall goal of this paper is to enhance the understanding and measurement of loneliness by identifying key experiential characteristics of loneliness in children and adolescents, and determine whether there is a need for refined assessment tools that accurately capture that experience. In Study 1, we synthesized the qualitative research on the child and youth experience of loneliness and found shared characteristics of loneliness, with some differences related to developmental changes (e.g.