fatema

• Pfabigan, Daniela Melitta; Frogner, Erik Rimestad; Asgari, Fatemeh & Sailer, Uta (2026). Appreciation of Social Experiences and Solitude in Everyday Life: The SOcial Experiences' daiLy Occurrence Scale (SOLO). Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. ISSN 0036-5564. doi: 10.1111/sjop.70146. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  While social interactions and actively chosen solitude both contribute to well‐being, existing measures focus solely on one dimension. We developed the SOcial experiences' daiLy Occurrence (SOLO) scale—a brief end‐of‐day diary measure capturing enjoyment of social interactions (including brief encounters with “weak ties”) and solitude experiences. Two scale development and validation studies were conducted: single‐day ( N  = 203) and 14‐day ( N  = 75) assessments. The final SOLO consists of 13 items forming two scales, the Social Interaction subscale and the Solitude subscale. Both scales demonstrated adequate psychometric properties and meaningful relationships with well‐being measures. The scales were independent, supporting the conceptualization of social enjoyment and solitude preference as distinct dimensions. The SOLO is therefore presented as two distinct scales. A composite score can be calculated if required, although subscale‐level analyses are recommended given the empirical independence of the two dimensions. The SOLO's brief format offers a practical compromise between ecological momentary assessment and retrospective measures, enabling investigation of the distinct roles of social engagement and solitude in everyday life.

• Asgari, Fatemeh; Vitelli, Valeria & Sailer, Uta (2026). Functional Structural Equation Modeling with Latent Variables. Structural Equation Modeling. ISSN 1070-5511. p. 1–9. doi: 10.1080/10705511.2026.2702102. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Handling latent variables in Structural Equation Models (SEMs) where both the latent variables and their corresponding indicators are random curves presents significant challenges, especially with sparse data. We develop a novel family of Functional Structural Equation Models (FSEMs) incorporating latent variables modeled as Gaussian Processes (GPs). The model adapts to cases when the random curves’ realizations are observed over a sparse subset of the domain. To extract smooth estimates for the functional parameters, we employ a penalized likelihood approach and evaluate the performance of the proposed model using simulation studies and a real data example, suggesting our model performs well. Supplementary materials are available online.

• Pfabigan, Daniela M; Frogner, Erik Rimestad; Asgari, Fatemeh & Sailer, Uta (2025). Appreciation of social experiences and solitude in everyday life: the SOcial experiences’ daiLy Occurrence scale (SOLO). PsyArXiv. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/6psar_v2. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  While social interactions and actively chosen solitude both contribute to well-being, existing measures focus solely on one dimension. We developed the Social experiences' daiLy Occurrence (SOLO) scale—a brief end-of-day diary measure capturing enjoyment of social interactions (including brief encounters with "weak ties") and solitude experiences. Two validation studies were conducted: single-day (N=203) and 14-day (N=75) assessments. The final SOLO consists of 13 items forming two scales: "Being with others" and "Being alone". Both scales demonstrated adequate psychometric properties and meaningful relationships with well-being measures. The scales were independent, supporting conceptualization of social enjoyment and solitude preference as distinct dimensions. The SOLO's brief format offers a practical compromise between ecological momentary assessment and retrospective measures.

• Sailer, Uta; Asgari, Fatemeh; Kristinsson, Jon Adalsteinn & Kvalem, Ingela Lundin (2025). The Interplay Between Social Factors and Metabolic Bariatric Surgery Outcomes—A 5-Year Prospective Study. Obesity Science & Practice. 11(2), p. 1–12. doi: 10.1002/osp4.70068. Full text in Research Archive
• Asgari, Fatemeh; Alamatsaz, Mohammad H.; Hayati, Saeed & Vitelli, Valeria (2025). Likelihood analysis of latent functional response regression models for sequences of correlated binary data. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics. ISSN 0303-6898. doi: 10.1111/sjos.12773. Full text in Research Archive
• Sailer, Uta; Friedrich, Yvonne; Asgari, Fatemeh; Hassenzahl, Marc & Croy, Ilona (2024). Determinants for positive and negative experiences of interpersonal touch: context matters. Cognition & Emotion. ISSN 0269-9931. 38(4). doi: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2311800. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The goal of the study was to determine which aspects of interpersonal touch interactions lead to a positive or negative experience. Previous research has focused primarily on physical characteristics. We suggest that this may not be sufficient to fully capture the complexity of the experience. Specifically, we examined how fulfilment of psychological needs influences touch experiences and how this relates to physical touch characteristics and situational factors. In two mixed-method studies, participants described their most positive and most negative interpersonal touch experience within a specific time frame. They reported fulfilment of nine needs, affect, intention, and reason for positivity/negativity, as well as the body part(s) touched, location, type of touch, interaction partner, and particular touch characteristics (e.g. humidity). Positive and negative touch experiences shared similar touch types, locations, and body parts touched, but differed in intended purpose and reasons. Overall, the valence of a touch experience could be predicted from fulfilment of relatedness, the interaction partner and initiator, and physical touch characteristics. Positive affect increased with need fulfilment, and negative affect decreased. The results highlight the importance of relatedness and reciprocity for the valence of touch, and emphasise the need to incorporate psychological needs in touch research.

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