The survey

The questionnaire has two parts: the first asks about someone’s experience of Re-engage, while the second asks about their general wellbeing, feelings and relationships.

Part one: experience of Re-engage

This part of the survey asks our older people to think about a list of statements about the impact joining Re-engage has had, and let us know to what extent they agree or disagree with them.

For instance, “As a result of joining Re-engage, I feel happier”, and “As a result of joining Re-engage, I have gained companionship.”

We also ask two broader questions:

• If joining Re-engage has had a positive impact on their life.
• If Re-engage volunteers and staff treat them with respect and as equals.

For all of these questions, we ask our older people to choose from the following responses: ‘Strongly agree’, ‘somewhat agree’, ‘neither agree nor disagree’, ‘somewhat disagree’, ‘strongly disagree’, ‘not sure’. They can also decline to answer the question.

These questions help us understand the ways our services make a difference, plus they give older people a chance to talk about their experiences at tea parties, activity groups, or on the phone to their call companion.

Although this part of the survey records their response as a choice from a list, this conversation with the older person could be the basis for talking about positive experiences or suggestions for improvements later in the call.

Part two: general wellbeing, feelings and relationships

This section of the survey includes standardised questions about someone’s feelings of isolation and loneliness, life satisfaction and happiness, and their social relationships. The questions are those used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in their UK population surveys.

By using standardised questions, we ensure that everyone is asked the same questions in the same way, and their responses are recorded in the same format. This consistency allows us to be confident in reaching conclusions about the changes people experience.

Working with the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the ONS found that older people understood and responded to these questions in ways that were consistent with people of other ages; responses to these questions have consistently been found to be reliable indicators of a person’s feelings of loneliness and wellbeing.

The ONS (as well as others) says the questions are safe to use with adults, including older adults experiencing loneliness. Re-engage provides befriending services to older people who have capacity; therefore, it is imperative that we treat older people as such, allowing them to decide for themselves whether or not they would like to respond to questions such as these and not making assumptions about how they feel.

According to the New Economics Foundation, “the best way to measure whether someone feels happy or satisfied is to ask them.” Speaking directly about loneliness and wellbeing can help to reduce the stigma attached to loneliness and enable people to speak more freely about how they’re feeling.

Questions on wellbeing

We ask a set of four questions from the ONS, which are designed to capture different types of experience: an overall sense of wellbeing; an overall sense of purpose; positive emotion yesterday and negative emotion yesterday. That’s why recommended best practice is to ask all four.

For each question, people are asked to give an answer on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’. They can also decline to answer the question.

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

The 0-10 scale was chosen by ONS in part to ensure that people could choose a score they felt genuinely reflected how they were feeling (as opposed to choosing from a smaller list of categories).

In general, it takes someone up to 30 seconds to answer each of these questions.

Questions on loneliness and isolation

To measure loneliness, we ask four questions: three indirect questions and one direct question.

This is recommended by the ONS, since some people can be reluctant to ‘admit’ to often feeling lonely when asked directly – they’ve found this can be true of older men, for instance.

People can feel more comfortable saying how often they experience feelings associated with loneliness when the word ‘lonely’ hasn’t yet been mentioned, which is why the fourth question is asked last. It is important that loneliness is not mentioned explicitly before then.

• How often do you feel that you lack companionship?
• How often do you feel left out?
• How often do you feel isolated from others?

For these three questions, people are asked to choose from three potential responses: ‘often’, ‘some of the time’, or ‘hardly ever or never’. They can also tell us they’re not sure, or decline to answer the question.

These questions and the first three response options were specifically developed to be asked during telephone surveys with older people; they’re designed to be relatively quick to ask and easy to answer while providing reliable information about someone’s feelings of loneliness.

The fourth question then asks people directly:

• How often do you feel lonely?

On this question, people can choose from five potential responses: ‘Never’, ‘Hardly ever’, ‘Occasionally’, ‘Some of the time’, or ‘Often or always’. They can also tell us they’re not sure, or decline to answer the question.

People tend to be able to answer all four of the loneliness questions within two minutes.

Questions on social relationships and trust

We ask two questions about people’s social networks; these are used in, for example, the government’s annual Community Life Survey. They offer insight into how well people feel supported and connected to others locally.

The first asks people to what extent they agree or disagree with the statement:

• “If I needed help there are people who would be there for me.”

The second asks to what extent they agree or disagree that:

• “If I wanted company or to socialise, there are people I can call on.”

For both questions we ask people to choose from four potential responses: ‘definitely agree’, ‘tend to agree’, ‘tend to disagree’, and ‘definitely disagree’. They can also tell us they’re not sure, or decline to answer the question.

We ask another question about social trust – this is indicative of people’s faith in others.

“Would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful dealing with people?”

For this question we ask people to choose one of the following responses: ‘most people can be trusted’, ‘it depends’, ‘can’t be too careful dealing with people’. They can also decline to answer the question.

Trust is considered to be crucial to social cohesion and ultimately to our individual and communal health and wellbeing. Levels of social trust tend to be lower among marginalised and vulnerable groups.