Purpose: Humans are fundamentally social beings, and the relationships we form with others are crucial for our well-being. Research across a variety of domains has established the association between a variety of interpersonal factors and health outcomes, including quality-of-life. However, there is a need for a more integrative, holistic analysis of these variables and how they relate to one another.
Methods: Undergraduate students (n = 1456) from four universities across the United States completed self-report measures of their quality-of-life and a variety of interpersonal factors identified as important predictors across the literature. We examined zero-order correlations between these measures and quality-of-life, estimated a path model to look at unique variance accounted for by each, and finally used network analysis to examine the network of direct and indirect associations among these variables and quality-of-life.
Results: Loneliness had the strongest association with quality-of-life across all analyses. When examining the unique association between quality-of-life and each interpersonal variable, six remained statistically significant: loneliness, social support, social connectedness, emotional intelligence, intimacy with one's romantic partner, and empathic concern. These results were supported by the network model, which found direct associations between quality-of-life and these six variables as well as indirect associations with all other interpersonal variables in the model.
Conclusions: Results from this research suggest that interpersonal factors in general, and loneliness in particular, are strongly associated with quality-of-life. Future research is needed to establish the direction of these effects and examine for whom these findings are generalizable.
Keywords: Interpersonal processes; Loneliness; Network analysis; Quality-of-life; Social isolation.