This research suggested that there were three major coping strategies or coping categories used by lonely persons when coping with their loneliness.  These three coping categories were also a consolidation of previous research that had been done on coping strategies.  The coping categories also seemed to fall along a continuum from RPA coping, through EES coping to CA coping.  However this research raised a number of questions that need to be answered in future research.

First is the direction of the relationship between loneliness and coping strategies.  It appeared from the present study that there may be a bi-directional relationship between loneliness and coping strategies, especially for RPA coping, however this cannot be confirmed given the cross-sectional methodology used here.  Future studies need to investigate how loneliness and coping strategies relate with each other and whether or not this relationship is bi-directional.

Secondly, there is a question of how lonely people choose which coping mechanism they will use.  For example, what makes one person choose RPA coping and another choose CA coping?  Some initial theorizing had been done here, but it is not accompanied by systematic investigation.  Previous theorizing and empirical investigations in this area have been lacking.  It may be related to such things as locus of control, feelings of powerlessness, the intensity of the painful loneliness experienced and the ability of the person to do something to alleviate their loneliness.

Thirdly, there seemed to be three common coping categories found among lonely individuals.  It may be possible that these three coping categories may be related to the ways in which these individuals form attachments to other people.  Shaver and Hazan (1989) have done some initial work into attachment styles among the lonely and have found that avoidant attachment and anxious/ambivalent attachment are associated more with loneliness than secure attachment.  Could there be a one to one relationship between attachment styles and coping, so persons who exhibit avoidant attachments also RPA cope, those who exhibit anxious/ambivalent attachments use EES coping and those who have secure attachments use CA coping?  This would be an interesting area of future research.