Assesses the social networks surrounding the individual including family and friendships.

The Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS) is a brief instrument designed to gauge social isolation in older adults by measuring perceived social support received by family and friends which typically takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. It consists of an equally weighted sum of 10 items used to measure size, closeness and frequency of contacts of a respondent’s social network. It was originally developed in 1988 and was revised in 2002 (LSNS-R) along with an abbreviated version (LSNS-6) and an expanded version (LSNS-18). These versions have been developed in order to meet clinician’s needs for brevity (LSNS-6) and the expanded version (LSNS-18) for basic social and health science research oriented purposes.