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Record W4412710696 · doi:10.2196/73694

Understanding the Thoughts and Preferences for Technologies Designed to Detect Feelings of Loneliness: Interview Study Among Older Adults

2025· article· en· W4412710696 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Jessica Rees, John Ratcliffe, Wei Liu, Yi Zhou, Sébastien Ourselin, Michela Antonelli, Yu Shi, Anthea Tinker, Faith Matcham

Bibliographic record

VenueJMIR Human Factors · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicHealth disparities and outcomes
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsLonelinessPreprintFeelingPsychologyQualitative researchSocial psychologySociologyComputer scienceWorld Wide WebSocial science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Background: Loneliness is a negative emotional state that is common in later life. The accumulative effects of loneliness have a significant impact on the physical and mental health of older adults. Automatic methods for detection and prediction are an emerging field to support early identification of loneliness. Objective: This study aimed to qualitatively explore the thoughts and preferences of people aged 65 years and older regarding technologies to detect feelings of loneliness in later life. Methods: We conducted 60 semistructured interviews with people aged 65 years and older between September 2022 and August 2023. Data were analyzed using a reflective thematic approach on NVivo software (Lumivero). Results: In total, three themes were identified representing what older adults considered important in a system able to detect loneliness: (1) interest and control of data, which was a priority for older adults; (2) perceived usefulness to address loneliness, which related to the importance of providing recommendations to reduce feelings of loneliness after detection; and (3) personalization as a priority, which included the level of loneliness for which an alert was sent and selection of relevant individuals who would be sent a loneliness alert. Conclusions: Findings from this in-depth qualitative study provide important perspectives from people with lived experience of loneliness on the context in which a sensor-based loneliness detection system would be most useful and acceptable to older adults. Future research will include such perspectives in the design of innovative technologies enabling the early detection of loneliness and access to timely interventions to tackle loneliness in later life.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.007
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.012
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.007
Threshold uncertainty score0.039

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0070.012
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.003
Scholarly communication0.0020.003
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.129
GPT teacher head0.391
Teacher spread0.262 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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