This 3-year longitudinal study examined the associations between regret management, everyday activities, and retirement satisfaction among recent retirees. We hypothesized that the regulation of a severe life regret can facilitate activity engagement and retirement satisfaction, but only if retirees manage their regrets adaptively by either…

Interest in civic engagement focused on the natural environment has grown dramatically, as has the population of older adults. Our article explores the potential for increased environmental volunteerism among older adults to enrich the lives of volunteers while benefitting the community and environmental quality. Curiously, this convergence has…

Using the frameworks of the life course perspective and continuity theory, this study focuses on the association among working people between gender and specific leisure activities, social interests and individuals' preferred retirement age. The study is based on the first wave of the Norwegian Life Course, Aging and Generation (NorLAG) study,…

Previous studies have established a positive association between organizational volunteering and well-being. In the current study, we examined whether the relations between organizational volunteering and positive affect, negative affect, and resilience are modified by respondents' age and number of chronic health conditions. This study used…

The primary goal of the study was to compare adult age groups on aging bias, with measures of knowledge of aging in the physical, psychological, and social domains and life satisfaction. The study sample, consisting of 752 men and women, 40 to 95 years of age, was tested using Neugarten, Havighurst, and Tobin's (1961) Life Satisfaction Index (LSI)…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of background, psychological, and social variables on older adults' well-being, and how this may differ for men and women. Participants included 800 adults from the 2002 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), aged 60 to 101 years old (M = 71.22, SD = 8.46), who completed the optional positive…

The present study focused on changes in volunteering over time among Italian adults and examined a model in which motives from self-determination theory (SDT) were hypothesized to influence a series of social-cognitive processes including self-efficacy judgments and constructs from the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study was conducted with…

Compared actual volunteers, latent volunteers, conditional volunteers, and definite nonvolunteers living in retirement community on social-structural, role, environmental, resource, lifestyle, and individual difference variables. Three functions emerged from discriminant analysis. Findings have implications for recruiting latent and conditional…

Examined volunteering bias in racial, gender, and age groups in an adult development study. Results showed the middle-aged group volunteered at a higher rate, but this effect was restricted to Whites. Women volunteered more readily than men, except the elderly. Whites volunteered more readily than Blacks. (JAC)

Compared older adults who volunteered to work for community organization at office or in adult day care center on social-psychological and demographic predictors. Found that day care center volunteers were higher than office volunteers on sympathy whereas office volunteers were higher than day care center volunteers on educational attainment,…

This article explores the meaning and experiences of paid work for older women. Taped, in-person interviews were conducted with 53 ethnically and economically diverse women, 55 to 84 years old. The interview guide contained open-ended questions regarding the meaning of work, reasons for working, and the centrality of work to personal identity.…

Volunteers' reasons for interest in and skills they could employ as resident advocates in nursing facilities under the auspices of an ombudsman program were obtained from applications of 778 individuals. A unique feature of the research was that interests and skills were assessed prior to volunteer participation. In contrast to motivations for…

A secondary analysis of a national sample of American adults (N=2,164) was used to examine the correlation between membership in voluntary associations and life satisfaction. Findings suggested that the hypothesized pattern of relationships is not ubiquitously present for all four of the older age categories studied. (Author)

Cultures differ in their models of the life course, including the number and the content of the stages through which people are expected to pass. Among those societies that recognize a period of retirement, the developmental tasks and opportunities that older individuals face are shaped by cultural ideas about morality, spirituality, passion, and…

This study examined the effects of personality traits and motivation to volunteer on well-being as 107 older participants went through an intervention to increase volunteering. Three groups of volunteers, current, new, and former volunteers, participated. Participants were assessed four times on standardized measures of personality, health,…