LONELY-EU Policy Brief No. 8
Key findings
- A systematic review of 2,720 social connection survey tools, drawn from 9,032 articles, found that the United States accounts for 33.6% of tool development and English-speaking countries for 56%. Only 18.7% of development work involves an EU-27 member state.
- Among tools with an assignable age band, 52% were developed around adults aged 26 to 44 and 4.7% around adults aged 65 and over. Only 10.8% of tools mention an ethnic or racial group.
- Two tools classed as measuring the function of relationships share on average 15.6% of their content. The figure is 9.4% for relationship quality and 20.1% for structure, compared with around 36% for depression scales.
- The EU Loneliness Survey and EU-SILC both measured loneliness in 2022 with the same question in nationally representative samples of all member states. They produced very different prevalence rates and country rankings, because survey mode and sampling also shape the result.
- An OECD review of official surveys found that all OECD countries measure social connections, yet loneliness appears in fewer than half of national surveys (Mahoney et al., 2024).
Executive summary
Governments across the EU fund responses to loneliness and social disconnection, and they need to know whether that spending works. That depends on survey tools that show which forms of connection people lack. A systematic review of 2,720 tools, drawn from 9,032 articles, shows where current tools help and where they fall short.
The tools were developed for a narrow slice of the population. A third were developed in the United States alone and 18.7% within the EU-27, mostly with adults aged 18 to 44 and rarely with adults over 65. Tools grouped under the same heading also ask about quite different things. Two tools in the same category share only a tenth to a fifth of their content, so two figures published under the same label can describe different experiences.
The tool is only one reason survey estimates differ. Surveys that ask the same question in the same year can still produce different prevalence rates and country rankings, because survey mode and sampling also shape the result.
Existing tools remain useful. They can track change within a survey series that keeps its questions and methods, and the Three-Item UCLA Loneliness Scale compares well across all 27 member states. The EU Social Isolation and Loneliness (SIL) Index, now in development, is designed to report the specific forms of connection that different parts of government can act on, comparably across member states. The brief closes with six recommendations: what to do with current surveys now, and how to build toward monitoring that can inform spending.
Written for ministries and public agencies that commission social connection surveys, and the national statistical offices that run them.
How to cite
Sharanya Mosalakanti, Prakhar Srivastava, Bastien Paris, Nathaniel Sabater, Miguel Alejandro Silan, Debora Brickau, Maike Luhmann, Hans Rocha IJzerman (2026). What Europe's Social Connection Numbers Hide: Heterogeneity, Origins, and Implications for Policy. LONELY-EU Policy Brief No. 8. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23317688
