The experience of loneliness of Canadian and Czech youth.

The present study examined the influence of cultural background on adolescents' experience of loneliness. Eighty Canadians and 168 adolescents from the Czech Republic formed the participants pool. They answered a 30-item yes/no questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of five subscales, namely: Emotional distress, Social inadequacy and alienation, Growth and discovery, Interpersonal isolation, and Self-alienation. Results revealed a mixed pattern of differences between the two cultures, with Canadian youth scoring higher than the Czechs only on Emotional distress, while that trend was reversed in Social inadequacy and alienation and Interpersonal isolation. Gender differences within cultures were also examined.