The proposed research will extend to 30 years the temporal span of one of the very few longitudinal studies of women's personality development in adulthood. The original sample consisted of 141 seniors who graduated from a well-known women's college in 1958 and 1960, shortly before the Women's Movement. The women have been intensively studied by the principal investigator at ages 21, 27, and 43; the proposed research would follow them into early 50s. Data to be obtained will include widely-ranging personality inventories and questionnaires about work, relationships, and other aspects of life. Some inventory and questionnaire data will be obtained from partners. These new data will be combined with archival data that include personality inventories, questionnaires, and demographic information from the women, and, at age 27, from their partners as well. For a substantial subgroup at age 21, there are observer descriptions, interviews, and information from and about parents. The conceptual objective is to study how the personalities of women affect their entry into age-graded roles and transitions and are modified by these roles and transitions in the changing environments of work, family, and intimate relationships. Emphasis will be placed on the psychological health of women in the context of various roles and role-sequences, and on the ability of women to make commitments and to modify or change them over time. Using ANOVA, hierarchical multiple regression, and t tests, the new data will be integrated with archival data to respond to two kinds of questions: (1) For the sample as a whole and for groups of special interest (such as women who were judged high on pathology in college or those who divorced when their children were young), what are the linkages over time between personality, social roles, and life outcomes at age 51? How do long-term role variables, such as amount and type of work or traditionality of roles, influence women's well being and effectiveness of functioning? (2) For most women in the sample, the period from ages 43-51 will have included the menopause, signs of aging, and the departure of children from the home. How do role-involvements, gender-related personality characteristics, and quality of relationships change over this period? Is lack of change associated with psychological dysfunction? Can changes be conceptualized, both for women with children and for other women, in terms of revision of """"""""social clock projects""""""""? Old and new data from partners, combined with data from the longitudinal sample, will bear on these questions.
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