This research is focused on developing a model of coping strategies used by lonely persons.  In this study three coping categories were derived from the data, namely, rumination and passive-avoidant coping (RPA), emotion expression and social coping (EES), and constructive active coping (CA).  These coping categories are similar to the coping categories found in previous research by Rubenstein and Shaver (1982) and Rokach and Brock (1998).  CA coping is similar to increased activity (Rokach & Brock, 1998) and active solitude (Rubenstein & Shaver, 1982) because CA coping, increased activity, and active solitude deal with the idea of increased physical activity or involvement in a constructive pursuit.  Likewise, EES coping is comparable to social support network (Rokach & Brock, 1998) and social contact (Rubenstein & Shaver, 1982) because EES coping, social support network, and social contact, to some degree, share coping that involves talking to people or social communication.  Finally, RPA coping resembles distancing and denial (Rokach & Brock, 1998) and sad passivity (Rubenstein & Shaver, 1982) because they contain similar behaviors (sit and think, take drugs, sleep more, watch TV, being alone, etc.) and thoughts (withdrawal).  Therefore there were similar coping strategies in each coping category from the previous researches to this project.  The only exception is the coping strategy crying, which is located in sad passivity for Rubenstein and Shaver (1982) but is located under EES coping in the present study.  The EES category created by the factor analysis, included coping strategies that not only suggested social outreach, but also strategies that expressed emotion, as for example, venting.  In both a theoretical and statistical sense, crying as a coping strategy had a better fit in EES coping than in RPA coping hence the discrepancy with the previous study by Rubenstein and Shaver (1982).

These three coping categories seem to fall along a continuum from RPA coping (negatively correlated with loneliness) through EES coping to CA coping (positively correlated with loneliness).  While these may not be the only coping categories used by lonely people, they may highlight important points along a continuum of coping with loneliness.  Below is a more detailed discussion of the individual coping categories.

Constructive Active Coping.

            Within this category, two different types of coping strategies were used: activity and problem-focused types of coping strategies.  The activity type of coping involved increased physical behaviors (such as walking, exercising) or behaviors that were constructive or productive (such as working on a hobby, work or study).  This was also reflected through Internet use.  CA coping had a strong relationship to school-related activity, which was a more constructive Internet behavior.  The problem-focused coping strategies suggested that these persons may also be trying to find ways to solve their loneliness problem.  Previous research has focused more on the active part of this coping and has not tapped into the idea that these individuals also tend to focus on their problem of loneliness and finding ways to deal with and overcome it.  People who use this coping category, therefore, take an active part in trying to solve their loneliness problem and is reflected in CA coping having the largest negative correlation with loneliness. 

            Within the content analysis of poems, none of the categories found were similar to the coping strategies constituting CA coping.  This would be expected given the fact that the people who use this coping category probably experience loneliness rather infrequently and to a lesser extent than others thus do not feel compelled to document their experiences.  A similar trend was detected in the amount of questionnaires answered.  Fewer questionnaires were received by persons who use CA coping.  This may be because the website had appealed more to individuals who felt lonely.

Emotion Expression and Social Coping.

            This coping category had a significant but weak correlation with loneliness.  Adolescents and young adults utilized this coping category more than older adults.  It included coping strategies that not only deal with reach out or talking to other persons but also as a means of expressing emotions.  People who used EES coping also tended to use the Internet for instant messaging.  This would seem to follow since EES coping involves some use of social outreach and instant messaging has an almost exclusive social function.  For example, instant messaging usually involves talking with friends and relatives rather than strangers, and can mimic the properties of a telephone (i.e., real time communication via typing or voice messaging, or even video and voice messaging).  Because instant messaging involves talking with known people it may be safe to assume that conversations can safely go to an intimate level. 

The use of both emotional and instrumental social support coping strategies suggested that these people may have talked to others, not only to express how they feel or get emotional support, but also to try to get advice about what to do.  Persons who used EES coping may also be talking to others in an attempt to increase the quality of the friendships that they have or to gain new meaningful friendships as attested to by the coping strategy, love and closeness.  This was especially true if the attempt is to get the friendship to a romantic level.  Overall the EES coping category was characterized by a reaching out to others.

One coping strategy within EES coping, love and closeness, provided a link to the content analysis data in Study 2.  Love and closeness involved thinking about and desiring to have someone close to the lonely person.  The poems and narratives shared a similar strategy called desire for someone.  This desire for someone was usually phrased in a romantic context.  Participants were usually looking for a romantic relationship, in a romantic relationship that was somehow suspended (for example, the partner is in another country working) or coming out of a romantic relationship.  Therefore, EES coping, while not entirely, may to some degree be taking place within a romantic context, manifested through the shared strategies of desire for someone and love and closeness.  The relationship between EES coping and one type of romantic context, namely looking for a romantic relationship, is similar to the coping category, social support network (Rokach & Brock, 1998), which included seeking romantic connections.

Given the potential conflictual nature of romantic relationships, if EES coping was taking place within a romantic context, it was understandable that these persons have a tendency to express their emotions particularly through crying and venting.  Even the strategy religion in one sense, represented an exclamation in response to an overwhelming feeling to turn to God for help.

            This research adds to past research by expanding on the relationship between EES coping and the romantic context.  Study 2 gives a variety of romantic contexts that includes not only looking for a romantic partner but also missing a romantic partner or having one’s heart broken.

Rumination and Passive-Avoidant Coping.

            RPA coping had the strongest significant negative correlation with loneliness.  It also had a significant but weak negative correlation with age suggesting that this coping category was used more by youth.  This coping category involved both cognitions and behaviors.  This study consolidated the two categories of sad passivity and distancing and denial outlined in previous research by taking into account both behaviors and thoughts.  It also added other coping strategies such as suffering, acceptance, using the Internet, daydreaming, and power and revenge.  Persons in this category adopted a mode of coping that perpetuated the state of loneliness they were in.  Most of the behaviors described are either harmful to the person (e.g. taking drugs, overeating) or involved a passive state (e.g. sitting, being alone).  The rumination described persons reflecting more on the experience of loneliness itself, rather than on what to do about it.  In this sense it is possible that a bi-directional relationship between loneliness and RPA coping may exist, creating a vicious cycle.

            The results showed that there is a significant relationship between using the Internet as a means of coping with loneliness and the level of loneliness.  This confirms the finding of Kraut et al. (1998) that says there was some relationship between loneliness and Internet use.  However, this study also showed that using the Internet to cope with loneliness loads well in the RPA coping factor.  What this means was that persons who are using the Internet to cope with loneliness tended to use other RPA coping strategies as well.  The data suggested that lonely people, who used the Internet as a way of coping with loneliness, systematically used the Internet in a way that will help them avoid dealing with the problem of loneliness, i.e., they used it as a means of escaping the problem.  In particular this research found that using the Internet for surfing, chatrooms, entertainment and playing games was associated with both higher levels of loneliness and RPA coping. 

This is congruent with previous research by Korgaonkar and Wolin (1999), which suggested that lonely people use the Internet as a way of escaping their loneliness.  In particular, the Internet was used to “relieve boredom and stress” (Korgaonkar & Wolin, 1999, p. 63) that involved not only activities they defined as entertainment, but also email and chatrooms as well.  The categories surfing and playing games used in this project seemed to fall within their entertainment category as well.  Chatrooms, while initially appearing as something social, may in fact have more entertainment utility than social utility.  It is quite possible that conversations rarely ever reach a deep intimate level, unless it is with a person or group of people who have been talking in chatrooms over a period of time. 

These results add to previous research by not only demonstrating the translation of RPA coping into a practical example of use of the Internet but also questioning Kraut et al. (1998) findings.  If people were using RPA coping even before using the Internet, then using the Internet may have just amplified a process that was already taking place.  Therefore loneliness and use of the Internet may be moderated by RPA coping.

            The content analysis helped to illuminate RPA coping.  Content analysis can help in the understanding of RPA coping in two ways.  Firstly, there was some overlap in categories found in the poems and narratives in Study 2 and the coping strategies in RPA coping in Study 1, therefore providing further insight into the coping strategies in this category.  Secondly, by describing possible causes and experiences of loneliness one can get a sense of the mechanism behind why a person may choose RPA coping over other types of coping.

            Several of the coping strategies found in the poems and narratives overlapped with the coping strategies within RPA coping.  These coping strategies included, inactivity, withdrawal, sleep, drugs and pushing others away.    The term inactivity was used instead of sit and think/do nothing, because other behaviors fell under inactivity as well, such as, being curled in a ball or lying in bed.  Sit and think/do nothing therefore, was a general state of passivity, involving a variety of different behaviors.

Added to the coping strategies are ideas of hiding feelings and death.  Death was another category describing escaping behavior and thoughts.  Both sad passivity and distancing and denial had an element of suicide or attempted suicide within them.  Hiding feelings seemed to come out of the social undesirability of displaying feelings of loneliness.  However, the question of whether individuals truly deny their loneliness (as suggested by Rokach and Brock, 1998) or whether they are merely cleverly hiding it from outsiders arises.  More research is needed into this particular problem.

            The poems and narratives provided several possible causes of loneliness, all revolving around the idea of having insufficient social networks.  In particular however, two causes strongly suggested that the cause is beyond the person’s control, abuse and rejection, and misfit.  In cases where an individual felt powerless to change the cause of the situation, even if it was only perceived, may have resulted in RPA coping.  Because there seems to be little escape from their loneliness, the EES and CA coping would have been ineffective strategies.  It makes little sense to constantly try to solve a problem a person perceives an unsolvable (CA coping) nor does it make sense to use EES coping, since these people had little social networks to begin with in the first place.  The end result may be a heavy reliance on RPA coping, reflected in particular by the coping strategy, acceptance.

            The descriptions of experiences of loneliness also provided useful insights as well.   While there was no test to link certain experiences to RPA coping, certain experiences appeared to fit into RPA coping.  Specifically, experiences such as painful, no direction/purpose, nothingness, no control, no emotion described what loneliness may have felt to some people leading to RPA coping.  Previous research has not empirically pointed to the categories of no direction/purpose, nothingness, no control and no emotion.  The category no control can be linked to the previous paragraph’s idea of having little control.  In this case, while a person may be unaware of the cause of his/her loneliness, there can still be that sense of having little control over his/her feelings of loneliness causing an over-reliance of RPA coping.  The idea of no emotion was a state of lethargy or not having the energy to do more active coping.  It could also have been withdrawing from the painful experience of loneliness.  Finally, the category no direction/purpose, may in some ways help to explain why people who use RPA coping report spending time sitting and thinking.  Perhaps it is an attempt to make sense of the situation they find themselves in, a situation they seem to have little understanding about.

Summary of coping strategies.          

These three coping strategies provide some insight into how different people cope with loneliness.  This study adds to previous research in several different ways: by suggesting a continuum of coping strategies, showing both the behavior and cognition in each strategy, providing a possible link between the idea of romance and EES coping, linking Internet use to loneliness and coping (and questioning previous research in this area), providing phenomenological descriptions of both EES and RPA coping and suggesting possible mechanisms behind RPA coping and loneliness (i.e. why certain people would choose internal avoidant coping).  Also this study suggests that perhaps therapeutic attempts at loneliness should focus on coping, especially RPA coping, and try to pull lonely individuals from one end of the continuum to the other, while being mindful of the processes behind RPA coping.

The results, however did not document a mechanism that would determine individuals’ use a particular coping strategy.  It is plausible that a third unseen factor may help to explain the correlations between loneliness and coping categories.  This third factor could explain why some individuals choose certain coping categories over others.  The data from poems and narratives provided some information regarding a possible mechanism for choosing RPA coping, but further empirical research needs to be done.  Also unclear was the direction of the relationship between loneliness and the coping categories.  The correlations between loneliness and coping categories suggested that the level of loneliness may affect the way people cope with it, but also the way people cope with loneliness can affect the level of loneliness.  It is unclear whether the relationship is truly bi-directional, or it is operates only in the direction of loneliness to coping.  Longitudinal research is needed to determine the direction of the relationship.

Strengths and Limitations.

Two important issues arising out of the methodology need further deliberation.  These two issues are collecting data over the Internet and using a joint quantitative and qualitative approach.  Below is an analysis of the strengths and weakness of adopting this methodological approach.

Advantages of Internet data collection.  One benefit of Internet data collection was the low cost of recruiting participants at an international level.  With focused effort and planning, the Internet can be a powerful, yet inexpensive tool in conducting cross-cultural studies.

Study 1 collected data via an electronic questionnaire posted on the Internet.  Electronic questionnaires have several advantages over the traditional pen-and-paper approach, especially if items on the questionnaire are close-ended.  In one instance, it allows for the collection of responses that are unambiguous and complete.  That is to say, the researcher knows exactly what responses were chosen, and also the electronic questionnaire contains internal checks to ensure that all necessary questions are answered and answered appropriately.  For close-ended questions, the electronic questionnaire also eliminated the need for coding and data entry, since responses given were already stored electronically.  When dealing with large numbers of questionnaires, this increases efficiency and cuts down on time spent on data checking, coding and data entry.

From Study 2, one can see that loneliness feeds creativity.  However, it can be difficult to gain access to these creative expressions of loneliness because they may be sparse among large numbers of people and are usually kept very personal and hidden.  The Internet provides a medium of self-expression without the risk of being identified, making it safer and thus more likely that these loneliness expressions usually kept hidden away, to be revealed to others.  And by providing a search function, the Internet allowed the researcher to find in a short space of time wholesome lists of these expressions spread across thousands of websites.

Disadvantages of Internet data collection.  Although Internet data collection provided some benefits, there were some shortfalls as well.  Especially with regards to Internet data collection, the authenticity of the data collected is always suspect.  For this study there was no foolproof test to ensure that the data collected was authentic.  However, several confirmatory procedures were in place to reduce erroneous data.  One procedure asked respondents to indicate if they had answered the questionnaire before.  Another procedure utilized an Internet counter, which had the ability to track the country where incoming visitors were accessing the website.  This was matched against responses for nationality in the questionnaire to determine if there were any discrepancies.  Though not comprehensive, these procedures did provide some evidence that the data came from a variety of different and independent sources.

It would be difficult to obtain a sample of participants based on random selection using the Internet.  Given this fact, the most viable procedure for getting participants was through self-selection.  However, self-selection had the unfortunate consequence of biasing the sample in several ways.  Respondents therefore were more likely to be lonely, young, female, and from the United States.  Nationality was so skewed, for example, that there was limited ability to detect significant differences.  One possible way of correcting this is to collect a sample of sufficient size to allow for statistical analysis.

Due to the financial constraints of the researcher, the questionnaire was only posted in English, preventing non-English speakers from answering this questionnaire.  One can see from the frequencies of nationality that it was more likely that participants from English-speaking countries would answer the questionnaire (e.g. US, England, Australia).

Another problem is the ethics behind gathering data over the Internet, especially with regards to collecting data from minors or asking sensitive questions.  Within the United States, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act makes it illegal to collect information from children younger than 13 years without parental consent.  The researcher decided to use a safe minimum age of 14 years.  In addition, the nature of the Internet makes it difficult to collect verifiable parental consent from minors.  In order to avoid having to ask for parental consent from the 14 plus sample, all sensitive questions on the original questionnaire had to be dropped.  Sensitive questions were also dropped because communication was not face to face and there was limited ability to provide follow up support in cases where it would have been needed.  The poems and narratives provided a means of circumventing some of these problems.

Benefits of a combined qualitative and quantitative approach.  This research incorporated both the use of a questionnaire and content analysis.  A combination of both methods provided useful insights into loneliness and coping strategies, more so than an individual contribution from just one method.  Questionnaire data were useful in finding general trends and patterns whilst the poem and narrative data were particularly useful in furthering the understanding of loneliness, EES and RPA coping and possible mechanisms behind lonely people’s choice of RPA coping.