Predicting retirement adjustment problems in women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a woman's rapid adjustment to retirement could be predicted. A review of previous literature found a large number of variables, of both an interpersonal and intrapersonal nature, which appeared to be important in retirement satisfaction of women. Literature review revealed methodological problems in the reliability and validity of the instruments used to assess the variables' importance in retirement satisfaction. The present study was an effort to rectify this weakness in retirement research. A personal data sheet was constructed which included the demographic variables which had proven important in previous literature. Five scales from the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), the I (inner directedness), SA (self acceptance), SR (self regard), FR (feeling reactivity), and C (capacity for intimate contact), were chosen because they incorporated the personality variables found to be important in previous literature. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was chosen to indicate amount of depression felt. These instruments, along with the Retirement Descriptive Index (RDI), were specifically selected because both validity and reliability studies had been conducted on them. The first three inventories were sent to the first 300 women who indicated a desire to retire at the end of the 1981-82 school year to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. In January, 1983, the fourth inventory, the RDI, was sent to the 105 women who completed the original set. Of these, 98 women returned this form completed. Multiple regression analysis, and simple and multiple correlation procedures were used to determine the predictive abilities of the variables under study. The results of this study indicate that for women retiring from the Texas schools, personality factors contribute approximately 21 per cent of control of the variance in the RDI, a measure of retirement satisfaction. Of these factors, amount of depression appears most important.