Journal article
Life Events and Loneliness Among Older Women of Diverse Sexual Identities: Application of the Stress Process Model
J Lam, A Campbell
Research on Aging | Published : 2023
Abstract
Loneliness among older adults has been a topic of interest in recent years. We analyse four waves of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. We estimate growth models to examine differences in loneliness trajectories from age 50 for women who identify as exclusively heterosexual, plurisexual (bisexual, mainly heterosexual, mainly lesbian) and exclusively lesbian. We find no significant differences in levels of loneliness across sexual identity groups at age 50. We find that while loneliness trajectories of exclusively heterosexual women trend down, levels of loneliness increase with age among plurisexual women. Adverse health events and relationship problems increase l..
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Grants
Awarded by University of Newcastle Australia
Funding Acknowledgements
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project ID CE140100027). The research on which this paper is based was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) by the University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health for funding and to the women who provided the survey data. The ALSWH survey programme has ongoing ethical approval from the Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) of the Universities of Newcastle and Queensland (approval numbers H-076-0795 and 2004000224, respectively, for the 1973-78, 1946-51 and 1921-26 cohorts; and, H-2012-0256 and 2012000950, for the 1989-95 cohort). We would also like to acknowledge the research assistance of Catherine Dickson and Ellen Nixon.