Loneliness Structure Study Of College Students In Henan Province

Many studies on Loneliness have been done in late 30 years in Western countries, and psychologists in China have now been becoming interested in this field as well. The purpose of this paper is to examine the loneliness structure of college students in Henan Province using the methods of Investigation, Interview, Questionnaire Survey, Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Results revealed that the structure of the college students' loneliness includes four dimensions. The four dimensions, arranged in descending order of importance to loneliness are: 1) social loneliness 2) intimate loneliness 3) self-loneliness and 4) development loneliness. This author maintains that loneliness is not only related to one's social relationship, but also to the development of one's self-identity. This author also points out that the college students' loneliness isn't necessarily an aversive experience; On the contrary, many college students view modest loneliness as a motivational factor and thus think it plays a positive role. Multiple differences in sex, source, major, academic rank, grade and the nature of the school, have been found on each dimension's scores and on the total loneliness scores.There are several new ideas brought forth by this paper as follows: a) One should explore the concept of loneliness not only in the field of social relationships, but also in the broad range of social life, b) View the concept of loneliness by including the individual's development. College students' loneliness and their self-identity development are combined in this paper to explore their loneliness, c) Results of this study suggested that not all college students' loneliness is an aversive experience. Modest loneliness may motivate one's activities and thus play a positive role, d) A questionnaire of the loneliness structure of college students in Henan Province has beendeveloped in this study and it proves to have high reliability and validity by means of Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmative Factor Analysis.Implications for future research are discussed.