The study of loneliness is a relatively new area of organized research in academia (Perlman, 1989).  Much of the previous research and theorizing into loneliness has focused on the causes of loneliness and the associations of loneliness to other behavioral and emotional problems such as depression, self-esteem, and suicide.

Not as much theorizing and research have been done on coping strategies and their relationship to loneliness, especially on cross-cultural and developmental levels.  Even a lesser amount of research has attempted to collect and categorize people’s subjective descriptions of loneliness and how they cope with it.  This project hopes to build upon the relatively underresearched area of coping strategies and loneliness and to consolidate previous research.  Accordingly, the objective of this project is threefold: to develop a model of coping strategies and its relationship to loneliness, to analyze the distribution of the model over age and culture, and to apply the model to Internet use.

In order to develop a model of coping strategies and its relationship to loneliness, this project utilizes both a questionnaire and qualitative data collected through poems and narratives.  Questionnaire data were used to test a model of coping strategies and to investigate the model across age and culture.  The poems and narratives allow for further understanding of patterns inductively derived from the questionnaire data.

This model may be useful in providing further insight into a recent study conducted by persons from Carnegie Mellon University, which suggested the Internet might increase the levels of loneliness within a person (Kraut, Patterson, Lundmark, Kiesler, Mukopadhyay & Scherlis, 1998).  This project investigates the possibility that coping strategies may help explain the relationship between loneliness and Internet use.

In addition to examining these various aspects of loneliness and coping strategies, data for this project were collected through the Internet.  The questionnaire was posted on the Internet and poems and narratives were collected over the Internet from persons who posted their loneliness experiences online.  Feasibility of data collection over the Internet and methodological problems are discussed.