Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults During COVID-19

For our thesis, we analyzed a set of data from the on-going longitudinal study, “Aging In the Time of COVID-19” (Guest et al., ongoing) from the Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging at Arizona State University. This study researched how COVID-19 and the resulting physical/social distancing impacted aging individuals' health, wellbeing, and quality-of-life. The survey collected data regarding over 1400 participants’ social connections, health, and experiences during COVID-19. This study gathered information about participants’ comorbid conditions, age, sex, location, etc. We presented this work in the form of a website including the traditional elements of an Honors Thesis as well as a visual essay with the data analysis portion coded with the JavaScript library D3 and a list of resources for our target audience, older adults who are experiencing social isolation and/or loneliness.