44 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 1 UCLA Loneliness Scale The UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3) is a 20-item scale measure of subjective feelings of loneliness and feelings of social isolation (Russell, 1996). Participants are asked to rate how often each of the positively and negatively worded statements describes them on a 4-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 4 (often). Sample items included, “How often do you feel that there are people that you can talk to?” and “How often do you feel that people are around you but not with you?” Scoring is done by reversing the positively worded items and then summing the scores on each item for a composite score ranging from 20 to 80, with higher scores (> 40) indicating greater degrees of loneliness. Version 3 has been widely used and validated with the college population as well as other adults in the United States and has yielded high reliability with alpha coefficient values ranging from .89 to .94 and test-retest reliability of .73 (Russell, 1996). In the current study, we followed Kalkbrenner’s (2023) recommendation and computed both Cronbach’s alpha value and coefficient omega, as the latter is a robust measure to alpha’s statistical assumptions. For the UCLA Loneliness Scale, both were the same value of .94, indicating strong reliability. Social Self-Efficacy Scale The Social Self-Efficacy Scale (SSES) is a 6-item measure subscale from the Self-Efficacy Scale (Sherer et al., 1982) that assesses students’ beliefs in their social competence. Items ask participants to respond on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to statements like “It is difficult for me to make new friends” and “I do not handle myself well in social gatherings.” Reverse scoring is done for the negatively worded items followed by summing the scores of all the items. A higher score indicates higher social self-efficacy. Researchers have indicated coefficient alpha values of .76 and .71 (Sherer et al., 1982; Wei et al., 2005). Construct validity for this measure has demonstrated correlations with measures of ego strength, interpersonal competency, and self-esteem (Sherer et al., 1982). In the current study, Cronbach’s alpha value for the SSES was .60, while the coefficient omega value was .57. Because we used a subscale of the Self-Efficacy Scale, the poor internal consistency reliability estimates of the SSES might, in part, be due to the low number of questions (Tavakoli & Dennick, 2011). Nonetheless, this instrument was chosen because it is a widely used instrument for assessing social self-efficacy and has reported construct validity (Sherer et al., 1982). The Experiences in Close Relationships—Relationship Structures Questionnaire The Experiences in Close Relationships—Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS; Fraley et al., 2011) is a 9-item measure used to assess attachment patterns with a variety of familiar relationships. For the current study, participants were asked to respond on the basis of close relationships in general as opposed to thinking about a specific person/relationship. The ECR-RS has two fundamental dimensions of underlying attachment patterns: anxious attachment and avoidant attachment. Sample items include “I usually discuss my concerns and problems with this person,” “I find it easy to depend on this person,” and “I worry this person may abandon me.” Participants rate the extent to which they believe each of the nine statements describes their feelings about their close relationships on a 7-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Items 1, 2, 3, and 4 are reverse scored. Items 1 to 6 make up the Avoidance Attachment scale, and items 7 to 9 comprise the Anxiety Attachment scale (Fraley et al., 2011). Scores for each scale are derived from finding the average of the items. Researchers noted Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities ranging between .83 and .87 for the Anxiety Attachment scale and .81 to .92 for the Avoidance Attachment scale across multiple domains (Fraley et al., 2011; Klausli & Caudill, 2021). Our study yielded a Cronbach’s alpha score of .88 and a coefficient omega score of .87 on the Avoidance Attachment scale and alpha .76 and omega .82 for the
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