Social
Better understanding the social connection experiences of Americans: a latent profile analysis using the All of Us data set Omar* Omar Pedraza
Humans thrive on meaningful social relationships. Unfortunately, Americans are currently less socially connected than in the past, prompting the U.S. Surgeon General to release an advisory highlighting this as a critical public health issue. The current literature offers multiple, interconnected perspectives on social connection, framing it in terms such as loneliness, social isolation, and belonging. While each conceptualization provides different pieces of insight about an individual’s social connection experience, research often focuses on just one or two constructs at a time. Using a broad range of constructs can both help better characterize the social connection experiences of individuals and can help elucidate which of those aspects might be most impactful to intervene on. Therefore, this study employs latent profile analysis to identify distinct profiles of social connection experiences among Americans, using survey data from the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program. Specifically, the Social Determinants of Health survey data asks various questions to assess loneliness, social support, and neighborhood-level social cohesion, among others. The latent profile analysis will identify subgroups of social connection experiences among Americans, which will be cross-referenced with other demographic and neighborhood characteristics data to better understand the conditions that give rise to these experiences. This study aims to deliver critical insights into the dynamics of social connection in the United States, with a potential next step being a comparison of these subgroups concerning their health outcomes.