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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2064
igaa057.2064
Abstracts
Session 5690 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Co-Creating Culturally Nuanced Measures of Loneliness With Māori Elders
Waldegrave Charles 1 Cunningham Chris 2 Love Catherine 1 Nguyen Giang 1 1 
Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit, Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand
2 
Research Centre for Maori Health and Development, Massey University, Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”610 610
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
The growing international evidence on the impacts of social isolation and loneliness has profound implications for positive health status and wellbeing (Holt-Lunstad et. al. 2015). This raises important questions about how we measure loneliness, particularly in extended family cultures where loneliness may be experienced differently from western more individualistic cultures. In this research, key questions around loneliness and social isolation were co-created with Māori Elders and responses were compared with a standard international loneliness scale (De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale) to help identify universal aspects of loneliness and Māori specific aspects. The results demonstrated significant correlations between the co-created questions and the international scale. However, they also demonstrated substantial expressions of loneliness among older Māori that are not captured by standard scales showing the need for Māori specific scales which are more inclusive of their cultural norms and can provide more precise data for constructive policy making and service provision.