Compare methods

	Convoy Model Social Network Mapping	Lubben Social Network Scale
Field	Social Gerontology	Social Gerontology
Family	Process / pipeline	Latent structure
Year of origin	1980	1988
Originator	Robert L. Kahn & Toni C. Antonucci	James E. Lubben
Type	Elicitation-and-coding pipeline for personal social networks across the life course	Self-report scale of social network size and engagement in older adults
Seminal source	Kahn, R. L., & Antonucci, T. C. (1980). Convoys over the life course: Attachment, roles, and social support. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 253-286). Academic Press.	Lubben, J. E. (1988). Assessing social networks among elderly populations. Family & Community Health, 11(3), 42-52.
Aliases	Social Convoy Model, Hierarchical Mapping Technique, Antonucci Convoy Mapping, Convoys Over the Life Course	LSNS, LSNS-6, Lubben Scale, Social Network Scale for Older Adults
Related	3	3
Summary	The convoy model of social relations conceives of each person as moving through life surrounded by a 'convoy' of significant others who provide and receive social support. Introduced by Robert Kahn and Toni Antonucci in 1980, the model frames personal networks as dynamic structures shaped by stable attachments, changing social roles, and life-course transitions. Its signature elicitation tool is the hierarchical mapping technique, in which respondents place the people important to them into three concentric circles around a focal self, with the innermost circle reserved for those so close that life without them is hard to imagine. From this map an analyst codes the convoy's structure, composition, and the support functions its members serve, distinguishing aid, affection, and affirmation. The approach yields a person-centered, qualitative-plus-quantitative portrait of social embeddedness that complements count-based scales. It has become a foundational framework in gerontology and life-span developmental psychology for studying how relationships sustain well-being across aging.	The Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS) is a brief self-report instrument that gauges an older adult's level of social engagement by measuring the size of, and contact with, their family and friendship networks. Developed by James Lubben in 1988, it was designed to overcome the lack of a short, gerontology-specific tool for detecting social isolation, a condition tied to morbidity and mortality in later life. The original ten-item scale equally weights items covering network size, frequency of contact, and the presence of confiding relationships, summing them into a single index. A widely used six-item revision, the LSNS-6, retains three family and three friend items and supplies an empirically derived cutoff (a score below twelve) that flags people at risk of isolation. Because it relies only on self-reported counts rather than performance tests or clinical observation, the scale is feasible in surveys, primary care, and community screening. It has been translated into many languages and validated across diverse older populations, making it one of the most widely adopted social-isolation screens in gerontology.