The proposed research aims to continue the Mills Longitudinal Study and obtain new kinds of data on adult development, attachment, emotion, and work from the 120 women in their early 60s. This time of life is of great interest because although women can now expect many more years of vigor and good health and have many new possibilities open to them, they also have less guidance from societal norms than in previous stages of life. Thus, one major goal is to study successful adaptation in the areas of relationships, work, and retirement during this period. Another goal is to obtain videotaped interviews with the participants and a diary of daily experience to augment our database which so far has consisted primarily of mail-out inventories and questionnaires. This new information will afford measures of attachment patterns, emotional experience, expression, and control, and attainment of socially important qualities of generativity and integrity, and it will also provide the basis for another observer-based Q-sort. Because the women have been studied previously at ages 21, 27, 43, and 52, new inventory data will make it possible to trace their personality change over 40 years, test ideas about change over middle age, and study the antecedents of a variety of outcomes, including health, well-being, attachment, and emotion. Self-reported physical health data and measures of cognitive functioning will be obtained for present and prospective use. In planning collaborations, comparisons with other longitudinal samples will be conducted, particularly on factors associated with life satisfaction and adult development throughout middle age.
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