This project will draw upon archival data collected over the past 50 years and data currently being collected from the subjects of the long-term longitudinal studies of the Institute of Human Development. Current data collection relies upon intensive interviews and a series of questionnaires to assess the major role involvement, satisfactions and dissatisfactions, plans and expectations of study members and their spouses. The major aims of this facet of the larger research are to delineate for men and women the relative salience of occupational and family roles over the adult years, to study the reciprocal effects of the occupational activities of husbands and wives on family patterns, communication and mutual involvement in the later adult years, and to study the impact of retirement or projected retirement on the self-conceptions and general life satisfactions of husbands and wives. A series of ordinal scales relating to degree of role involvement and degree of satisfaction in occupational and family roles will be related to major patternings of the life course (in terms of continuities and discontinuities and the timing of turning points or role disruptions). Formulations deriving from the research of Levinson and others will be tested to ascertain whether or not postulated stages can be verified, the nature of turning points or defining points for life stages beyond early adulthood, and the frequency of crises or periods of profound turmoil in the adult years. It is the P.I.'s hypothesis that discernable stages will be most closely associated with role assumption or relinquishment and will be much more strongly related to career lines and to family roles than to chronological age as such. Personality variables assessed in adolescence are also expected to show a strong relationship to the relative smoothness of transitions over the adult life course.
| Clausen, J A (1987) Health and the life course: some personal observations. J Health Soc Behav 28:337-44 |
