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 Effects of Age of Retirement, Reason for Retirement,
and Pre-retirement Training on Psychological
and Physical Health during Retirement
CHRISTOPHER F. SHARPLEY
Bond University
RENATY LAYTON
Monash University
of retirement on psychological wellbeing, this paper
As a first stepthe
reports in ainfluence
series of of
studies examining
age when thewhether
retired; effects
retirement is because of age, redundancy, or illness, or is
voluntary; and the presence of pre-retirement education or
training on anxiety, depression, stress, and physical health
following retirement. Data were collected from 349 males and
385 females, ranging from 44 to 90 years and spread across
the first 5 years following retirement from full-time work.
Results indicated that men who retired earlier reported better
physical health (although there were no significant effects for
women), that both men and women who retired voluntarily
were significantly less anxious, depressed, or stressed than
those who retired for reasons of ill-health or were made
redundant, and that the experience of pre-retirement educa¬
tion or training appeared to be associated with reduced
psychological distress following the retirement act. In
addition, exploratory data suggested that pre-retirement
education which includes social, health, personal, and
relationship aspects of the retirement process may be associ¬
ated with lower psychological distress during retirement.
Implications for psychological services and the training of
psychologists are discussed.
Retirement has been conceptualised by Peterson (1989) as
one of the major life crises. Atchley (1976) saw retirement
as a condition in which an individual is forced to stop work
and is employed at less than full-time rates, with implica¬
tions for income which are usually addressed by pension or
private sources. As a result of social and workstyle factors,
many Australians are retiring earlier than the traditional 60
or 65 years, and thus are confronting the crisis of retirement
at ages when they are still well able to work in terms of their
physical health. For these people, whether they retire volun¬
tarily or by way of forced redundancy may be a key factor in
determining their attitude to retirement and their consequent
adjustment to life without full-time work and income. Thus,
the reason why a person retires, as well as the age when they
retire may be "background" predictor factors which influ¬
ence retirement adjustment. There is some research evidence
to suggest that these factors do, in fact, affect physical and
psychological health during retirement.
For example, Parker (1982) noted that many men who
had retired voluntarily had done so after several years of
Address for correspondence: Dr C.F. Sharpley, Department of Psychology, Bond University, Gold Coast OLD 4229, Australia.
planning, thus setting up alternative occupations (both finan¬
cial and nonfinancial) and income satisfactory to their
personal and material needs. By contrast, men who were
forced to retire felt that their everyday way of life had been
disrupted, and had done little effective planning or prepara¬
tion for retirement. This finding is mirrored by a report from
the Australian Council of Social Services (1980) which
found that mandatory (i.e., involuntary) retirement had
adverse effects on the mental and physical health as well as
the life expectancy of the retired person. These effects were
exacerbated when there was no kind of pre-retirement train¬
ing available. Similarly, the Department of Social Security
(1988) reported that 24% of people who were forced to
retire because of age would have preferred to remain in full-
time employment. Further, 25% of full-time employees over
the age of 45 years would have preferred gradual retirement
(i.e., moving from full-time to part-time employment over
time before ceasing work altogether). Atchley (1982) and
Walker, Kimmel, and Price (1981) found that people who
were forced to retire earlier often encountered more difficul¬
ties in adjusting to retirement than people who retired volun¬
tarily. Thus, it appears that the use of a specific age as a
reason for retirement does not take into account the range of
individual preferences that exist in any sample of retired
persons, and that the reason for retirement may be at least as
great a factor in determining adjustment to retirement as age
itself.
Another reason for forced retirement apart from age is
poor health. Muller and Boaz (1988) and Parker (1980)
noted that poor health that leads to early retirement also
predicts poorer adjustment to retirement. Feldman (1994)
commented that "poor health often makes continuity in the
job physically less possible, early retirement a necessity
rather than an option, and quality of life during retirement
distinctly lower" (p. 296). Barfield and Morgan (1978)
reported that the retiree's health status was one of the
strongest predictors of satisfaction during retirement, with
the healthiest people claiming to be "very satisfied" or
"satisfied" with retirement.
Because it represents a major life crisis, retirement
requires adequate preparation. Some data suggest that
planning for retirement plays a large part in determining the
degree of satisfaction experienced during retirement.
Feldman (1994) suggested that employees who received
comprehensive pre-retirement training were more likely to
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
VOLUME 33 NUMBER 2 pp. 119-124
119
CHRISTOPHER F. SHARPLEY AND RENATY LAYTON
retire earlier, and that advance preparation, plus the
emotional and social support of retirement counselling and
training, assisted in adjusting to retirement. This is
supported by Hornstein and Wapner (1985) and Richardson
and Kilty (1991). Those authors found that workers who did
not want to retire and had no tangible plans for their retire¬
ment lifestyle consequently struggled to hold onto their
working identity and lifestyle. These workers retired angry,
frustrated, and role-less compared to individuals who had
planned for their retirement. Fretz, Kluge, Ossana, Jones,
and Merikangas (1989) found that the strongest predictors
of anxiety and depression among pre-retirees were a low
sense of self-efficacy about being able to handle retirement,
plus a low level of planning for retirement. Bearing these
findings in mind, it is salutary to note that a report from the
Australian House of Representatives (House of
Representatives Standing Committee on Community
Affairs, 1990) found that one of the most common difficul¬
ties facing people about to retire was lack of information
about facilities, services, and opportunities regarding educa¬
tion about retirement, also commenting that "only about 5%
of Australians Hearing retirement have had the benefit of
retirement education" (p. 41). In spite of this, most pre¬
retirement planning is in the form of financial advice, with
little emphasis on the physical and mental health aspects or
on social, family, and recreation aspects of retirement
(Feldman, 1994).
Thus, the influence of age when retired, reason for
retirement, and presence of any pre-retirement education
appear to be salient factors to investigate within an
Australian population in the mid-1990s. With the population
boom of the post-World War II years now nearing retire¬
ment age, exploration of those variables which might help
individuals deal more effectively with retirement is relevant
to everyday psychological practice. However, in spite of the
relevance of data regarding the retirement adjustment
process, "we know little about the lives of people who have
retired" (Encel & Studencld, 1996, p. 4). Further, as noted
by Encel and Studencld, "although there is an extensive
literature on ageing in Australia, not much has been written
about retirement. Indeed, the subject has not attracted a
great deal of attention except in the United States" (p. 4).
For that reason, we have set up a series of studies into retire¬
ment, of which this paper reports the first step, that is, a
survey of retirees to determine the effects on psychological
and physical health during retirement of (a) age when they
retired, (b) the reason for retirement, and (c) presence of any
pre-retirement education or planning. Although physical
health is not easily assessed without medical evaluation, it is
possible to evaluate participants' self-ratings of their physi¬
cal health as an indicator of their overall outlook on life
(Greenberg, 1981). This procedure was followed here by
asking participants to rate their overall physical health, and
to indicate the number of times during the last 3 months that
they had contracted an illness or infection, or had visited a
medical practitioner for assistance. Psychological health
was assessed via two paper-and-pencil tests (Zung's self-
rating scales for anxiety and depression). Additionally,
because it is of value to determine which specific factors in
participants' lives are contributing towards their self-
reported anxiety and depression, a measure of self-
perceived stress arising for 14 common factors was also
used (the Self-perceived Stress in Retirement Scale).
Because the process of adjusting to retirement is not
immediate, data were collected from a sample of people
who had been retired from between 6 months and 5 years.
As a first stage towards developing intervention programs
for helping people plan effectively for retirement, this study
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
120
was performed via mailed and anonymous paper-and-pencil
questionnaire.
Finally, several commentators have noted that the
"impact of withdrawal from gainful employment is likely to
be different" for men and women (Encel & Studencld, 1996,
p. 25). The competing roles of nurturer and employee have
been shown to complicate women's decisions about and
ways of proceeding through retirement (Prentis, 1992). On
the Australian scene, Winocur and Rosenman (1991)
suggested that women approach the retirement experience
differently. Therefore, the data were tested for significant
differences between men and women on the major depen¬
dent variables, and results were examined for each gender
separately simply because of these hypothesised differences
in men's and women's experiences of retirement.
Method
Participants
A questionnaire was sent to 1,500 members of the
Australian Retired Persons' Association in Victoria with
their monthly newsletter late in 1995. From this sample, 349
males and 385 females returned the questionnaire in useable
form within 3 months of receiving it. The average age of
males was 65 years (range = 44 to 90 years), and for
females also 65 years (range = 48 to 89 years). The most
common marital status was married (77.9% of males and
37.9% of females), followed by widow(ed) (8.3% of males,
29.6% of females), single (6.3% of males, 15.8% of
females), separated (2.0% of males, 2.1% of females) and
divorced (5.2% of males, 14.5% of females). Most (88.5%
of males and 76.9% of females) had children and saw them
an average of 7.8 (males) and 9.2 (females) times per
month. Most participants lived in their own homes (92.0%
of males, 90.6% of females), with 3.7% of males and 4.7%
of females renting, 1.1% of males and .8% of females living
with relatives, and 3.2% of males and 3.6% of females
living in a retirement village. The most common maximum
level of education received was secondary school (37.7% of
males, 48.4% of females), followed by university (males =
34.2%, females = 35.9%), technical. (23.8% of males, but
only 7.3% of females), and primary school (4.3% of males
and 8.3% of females). All participants were retired from
full-time work. Previous occupations included both white
and blue collar activities, including managerial/administra¬
tive, professional, trades, sales, self-employed, and house¬
hold duties, suggesting that most sections of the overall
Australian workforce were tapped, with the possible excep¬
tion of unskilled manual workers. Incomes before retire¬
ment ranged from less than $10,000 to over $100,000, again
arguing for the overall representativeness of the sample
here. Additionally, these data approximate the overall distri¬
bution of the entire membership of the Australian Retired
Persons' Association,
Questionnaire
Apart from an explanatory statement and letter of invitation
to participate in the survey, the questionnaire booklet
included demographic information (gender, age, age when
retired, marital status, education, residence type); a question
which asked participants if they had received any form of
pre-retirement education or training and, if so, whether this
covered more than simply financial matters; two physical
health questionnaires (self-rating of health; frequency of
visits to a medical practitioner, injuries, accidents, and infec¬
tions); Zung's Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-
rating Anxiety Scale (SAS); and a measure of self-perceived
stress from 14 sources. Each of these is described below.
Self-rating of health. Participants were asked to rate their
own health "during the last three months" on a 5-point scale
ranging from very bad, to bad, neither bad nor good, good,
and very good.
Frequency of visits to a medical practitioner, injuries,
accidents, and infections were measured by a self-rating
scale which asked participants to report how many of these
had occurred during the last 3 months.
Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS: Zung, 1965). The SDS
consists of 20 items identified in factor analytic studies of
the syndrome of depression. There are an equal number of
positively and negatively worded items to reduce response
bias, and respondents are asked to indicate whether each
symptom is true for themselves "a little or none of the
time", "some of the time", "a good part of the time", or
"most of the time" over the past week. Raw scores range
from 20 to 80 and may be reduced to a depression index.
The SDS has been found to possess split-half reliability of
.81 (Zung, 1973), .79 (DeJonghe & Baneke, 1989), and .94
(Gabrys & Peters, 1985). Internal consistency (alpha) is .88
for depressed patients and .93 for nondepressed patients
(Gabrys & Peters, 1985). The SDS has also been found to
be superior to the MMPI Depression scale and the Beck
Depression Inventory for assessing depression in male
psychiatric inpatients (Schaefer et ah, 1985).
Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS: Zung, 1971). The SAS
was developed by Zung as "a standardised method of evalu¬
ating and recording the presence of anxiety as a clinical
disorder" (Zung, 1971, p. 371), with items drawn from a list
of symptoms associated with anxiety as a psychiatric disor¬
der and selected from major American texts in the area
(Zung, 1971). Five affective symptoms and 15 somatic
complaints make up the 20 items of the SAS, and responses
are made on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from none or
little of the time, some of the time, good part of the time, to
most or all of the time for how respondents have felt during
the previous week. Total raw scores may be converted to an
anxiety index score ranging from 25 to 100. Zung (1986)
used a morbidity cut-off score of 50, with those scoring
above this having anxiety to a degree which is clinically
significant. Psychometric data for the SAS are good, with
split-half reliability at .71 (Zung, 1971), and internal consis¬
tencies of .85 (Zung, 1980) and .81 (Jegede, 1977) for clini¬
cal samples, and .75 (Sharpley & Rogers, 1985) and .69
(Jegede, 1977) for normal samples. The SAS differentiates
between normal and psychiatric populations (Jegede, 1977;
Zung, 1980), and between psychiatric patients with an
anxiety disorder and those with other disorders (Zung,
1980).
Self-perceived stress (SPSR) was assessed by a 14-item
scale developed by the first author (Sharpley, 1997), which
asked participants to rate the "degree of stress you experi¬
enced during the last three months from each of these
factors", and then presented the possible causes of stress
(fear of death, loss of purpose, your mental health, loneli¬
ness, missing work, housing, recreation, exercise, boredom,
family affairs, personal relationships, your finances, your
spouse's health, and your physical health) on a 5 -point
scale ranging from little or none, to a bit, moderate, high, or
extreme. These 14 factors were generated by a group of
retirees who were requested to list those factors which
"significantly contributed to the day-to-day stress" that
participants experienced. Initial psychometric data on the
SPSR indicated internal consistency (alpha) of .88, and
item-total correlations ranging from .38 to .74. The SPSR
total scores showed significant (p < .001) positive correla¬
EFFECTS OF AGE OF RETIREMENT
tions with scores from tire SAS (.544) and the SDS (.538),
suggesting that stress, as defined here, was a powerful
negative experience which related to, but did not completely
overlap, anxiety and depression. The SPSR has three princi¬
pal factors: missing work, which accounts for 39% of the
variance; personal health, which accounts for 10% of the
variance; and relationship issues, which accounts for 7.9%
of the variance.
Procedure
Each participant package also included a stamped,
addressed envelop, and participants were asked to send the
completed questionnaire back to the first author. All useable
questionnaires received within 3 months were included in
the data analysis. Following that analysis, a detailed report
was sent to the Australian Retired Persons' Association,
with a suggested insert for inclusion in the ARPA newslet¬
ter.
Results
Although there were no significant differences between
males and females on any of the health measures, data from
each gender were analysed separately because these differ¬
ences are of clinical and intrinsic (if not statistical) signifi¬
cance, and because the size of each gender sample allowed
this to be performed without major risk of Type I errors. In
addition, as has been noted above, the existing literature on
retirement has been "strongly biased towards men" (Encel
& Studencki, 1996, p. 25), and several studies (e.g.,
Winocur & Rosenman, 1991) suggest that the retirement
experience is different for men and women. Hence, Table 1
presents the mean and standard deviation scores for males,
females, and the total sample for the five dependent
variables: self-rating of health (health); frequency of visits
to a medical practitioner, injuries, illnesses, or infections
(illness); SDS scores (depression); SAS scores (anxiety);
and scores on the SPSR scale (stress).
Age When Retired
Regression procedures indicated that, although none of the
dependent variables was significantly predicted by age
when retired for females, the decision to retire earlier was a
significant predictor of self-rating of men's health during
the previous three months (F = 3.924, p < .05). That is, the
earlier that men retired, the greater their chances of report¬
ing that they were in good health. Because this result may
have been an outcome of their present age (i.e., younger
men may also have been expected to be healthier), this
analysis was run again, with age at the time of completing
the survey questionnaire included in the analysis. There was
no significant effect due to present age, indicating that the
predictive validity of age when retired on their present
evaluation of their physical health was not a function of any
"youthful" comparative lack of disease or infirmity in the
present sample of male retirees.
Mean (and Standard Deviation) Scores on All Dependent
Variables
Variable Males Females Total
Health 2.19 (1.55) 2.21 (1.56) 2.20 (1.55)
Illness 5.40 (3.98) 5.70 (4.25) 5.56 (4.13)
Anxiety . 30.65 (6.64) 31.24 (7.29) 30.95 (6.99)
Depression 34.20 (8.86) 35.07 (9.37) 34.66 (9.04)
Stress 26.07 (8,45) 25.94 (8.12) 26.09 (8.27)
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
121
CHRISTOPHER F. SHARPLEY AND RENATY LAYTON
retire earlier, and that advance preparation, plus the
emotional and social support of retirement counselling and
training, assisted in adjusting to retirement. This is
supported by Hornstein and Wapner (1985) and Richardson
and Kilty (1991). Those authors found that workers who did
not want to retire and had no tangible plans for their retire¬
ment lifestyle consequently struggled to hold onto their
working identity and lifestyle. These workers retired angry,
frustrated, and role-less compared to individuals who had
planned for their retirement. Fretz, Kluge, Ossana, Jones,
and Merikangas (1989) found that the strongest predictors
of anxiety and depression among pre-retirees were a low
sense of self-efficacy about being able to handle retirement,
plus a low level of planning for retirement. Bearing these
findings in mind, it is salutary to note that a report from the
Australian House of Representatives (House of
Representatives Standing Committee on Community
Affairs, 1990) found that one of the most common difficul¬
ties facing people about to retire was lack of information
about facilities, services, and opportunities regarding educa¬
tion about retirement, also commenting that "only about 5%
of Australians Hearing retirement have had the benefit of
retirement education" (p. 41). In spite of this, most pre¬
retirement planning is in the form of financial advice, with
little emphasis on the physical and mental health aspects or
on social, family, and recreation aspects of retirement
(Feldman, 1994).
Thus, the influence of age when retired, reason for
retirement, and presence of any pre-retirement education
appear to be salient factors to investigate within an
Australian population in the mid-1990s. With the population
boom of the post-World War II years now nearing retire¬
ment age, exploration of those variables which might help
individuals deal more effectively with retirement is relevant
to everyday psychological practice. However, in spite of the
relevance of data regarding the retirement adjustment
process, "we know little about the lives of people who have
retired" (Encel & Studencld, 1996, p. 4). Further, as noted
by Encel and Studencld, "although there is an extensive
literature on ageing in Australia, not much has been written
about retirement. Indeed, the subject has not attracted a
great deal of attention except in the United States" (p. 4).
For that reason, we have set up a series of studies into retire¬
ment, of which this paper reports the first step, that is, a
survey of retirees to determine the effects on psychological
and physical health during retirement of (a) age when they
retired, (b) the reason for retirement, and (c) presence of any
pre-retirement education or planning. Although physical
health is not easily assessed without medical evaluation, it is
possible to evaluate participants' self-ratings of their physi¬
cal health as an indicator of their overall outlook on life
(Greenberg, 1981). This procedure was followed here by
asking participants to rate their overall physical health, and
to indicate the number of times during the last 3 months that
they had contracted an illness or infection, or had visited a
medical practitioner for assistance. Psychological health
was assessed via two paper-and-pencil tests (Zung's self-
rating scales for anxiety and depression). Additionally,
because it is of value to determine which specific factors in
participants' lives are contributing towards their self-
reported anxiety and depression, a measure of self-
perceived stress arising for 14 common factors was also
used (the Self-perceived Stress in Retirement Scale).
Because the process of adjusting to retirement is not
immediate, data were collected from a sample of people
who had been retired from between 6 months and 5 years.
As a first stage towards developing intervention programs
for helping people plan effectively for retirement, this study
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
120
was performed via mailed and anonymous paper-and-pencil
questionnaire.
Finally, several commentators have noted that the
"impact of withdrawal from gainful employment is likely to
be different" for men and women (Encel & Studencld, 1996,
p. 25). The competing roles of nurturer and employee have
been shown to complicate women's decisions about and
ways of proceeding through retirement (Prentis, 1992). On
the Australian scene, Winocur and Rosenman (1991)
suggested that women approach the retirement experience
differently. Therefore, the data were tested for significant
differences between men and women on the major depen¬
dent variables, and results were examined for each gender
separately simply because of these hypothesised differences
in men's and women's experiences of retirement.
Method
Participants
A questionnaire was sent to 1,500 members of the
Australian Retired Persons' Association in Victoria with
their monthly newsletter late in 1995. From this sample, 349
males and 385 females returned the questionnaire in useable
form within 3 months of receiving it. The average age of
males was 65 years (range = 44 to 90 years), and for
females also 65 years (range = 48 to 89 years). The most
common marital status was married (77.9% of males and
37.9% of females), followed by widow(ed) (8.3% of males,
29.6% of females), single (6.3% of males, 15.8% of
females), separated (2.0% of males, 2.1% of females) and
divorced (5.2% of males, 14.5% of females). Most (88.5%
of males and 76.9% of females) had children and saw them
an average of 7.8 (males) and 9.2 (females) times per
month. Most participants lived in their own homes (92.0%
of males, 90.6% of females), with 3.7% of males and 4.7%
of females renting, 1.1% of males and .8% of females living
with relatives, and 3.2% of males and 3.6% of females
living in a retirement village. The most common maximum
level of education received was secondary school (37.7% of
males, 48.4% of females), followed by university (males =
34.2%, females = 35.9%), technical. (23.8% of males, but
only 7.3% of females), and primary school (4.3% of males
and 8.3% of females). All participants were retired from
full-time work. Previous occupations included both white
and blue collar activities, including managerial/administra¬
tive, professional, trades, sales, self-employed, and house¬
hold duties, suggesting that most sections of the overall
Australian workforce were tapped, with the possible excep¬
tion of unskilled manual workers. Incomes before retire¬
ment ranged from less than $10,000 to over $100,000, again
arguing for the overall representativeness of the sample
here. Additionally, these data approximate the overall distri¬
bution of the entire membership of the Australian Retired
Persons' Association,
Questionnaire
Apart from an explanatory statement and letter of invitation
to participate in the survey, the questionnaire booklet
included demographic information (gender, age, age when
retired, marital status, education, residence type); a question
which asked participants if they had received any form of
pre-retirement education or training and, if so, whether this
covered more than simply financial matters; two physical
health questionnaires (self-rating of health; frequency of
visits to a medical practitioner, injuries, accidents, and infec¬
tions); Zung's Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-
rating Anxiety Scale (SAS); and a measure of self-perceived
stress from 14 sources. Each of these is described below.
Self-rating of health. Participants were asked to rate their
own health "during the last three months" on a 5-point scale
ranging from very bad, to bad, neither bad nor good, good,
and very good.
Frequency of visits to a medical practitioner, injuries,
accidents, and infections were measured by a self-rating
scale which asked participants to report how many of these
had occurred during the last 3 months.
Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS: Zung, 1965). The SDS
consists of 20 items identified in factor analytic studies of
the syndrome of depression. There are an equal number of
positively and negatively worded items to reduce response
bias, and respondents are asked to indicate whether each
symptom is true for themselves "a little or none of the
time", "some of the time", "a good part of the time", or
"most of the time" over the past week. Raw scores range
from 20 to 80 and may be reduced to a depression index.
The SDS has been found to possess split-half reliability of
.81 (Zung, 1973), .79 (DeJonghe & Baneke, 1989), and .94
(Gabrys & Peters, 1985). Internal consistency (alpha) is .88
for depressed patients and .93 for nondepressed patients
(Gabrys & Peters, 1985). The SDS has also been found to
be superior to the MMPI Depression scale and the Beck
Depression Inventory for assessing depression in male
psychiatric inpatients (Schaefer et ah, 1985).
Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS: Zung, 1971). The SAS
was developed by Zung as "a standardised method of evalu¬
ating and recording the presence of anxiety as a clinical
disorder" (Zung, 1971, p. 371), with items drawn from a list
of symptoms associated with anxiety as a psychiatric disor¬
der and selected from major American texts in the area
(Zung, 1971). Five affective symptoms and 15 somatic
complaints make up the 20 items of the SAS, and responses
are made on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from none or
little of the time, some of the time, good part of the time, to
most or all of the time for how respondents have felt during
the previous week. Total raw scores may be converted to an
anxiety index score ranging from 25 to 100. Zung (1986)
used a morbidity cut-off score of 50, with those scoring
above this having anxiety to a degree which is clinically
significant. Psychometric data for the SAS are good, with
split-half reliability at .71 (Zung, 1971), and internal consis¬
tencies of .85 (Zung, 1980) and .81 (Jegede, 1977) for clini¬
cal samples, and .75 (Sharpley & Rogers, 1985) and .69
(Jegede, 1977) for normal samples. The SAS differentiates
between normal and psychiatric populations (Jegede, 1977;
Zung, 1980), and between psychiatric patients with an
anxiety disorder and those with other disorders (Zung,
1980).
Self-perceived stress (SPSR) was assessed by a 14-item
scale developed by the first author (Sharpley, 1997), which
asked participants to rate the "degree of stress you experi¬
enced during the last three months from each of these
factors", and then presented the possible causes of stress
(fear of death, loss of purpose, your mental health, loneli¬
ness, missing work, housing, recreation, exercise, boredom,
family affairs, personal relationships, your finances, your
spouse's health, and your physical health) on a 5 -point
scale ranging from little or none, to a bit, moderate, high, or
extreme. These 14 factors were generated by a group of
retirees who were requested to list those factors which
"significantly contributed to the day-to-day stress" that
participants experienced. Initial psychometric data on the
SPSR indicated internal consistency (alpha) of .88, and
item-total correlations ranging from .38 to .74. The SPSR
total scores showed significant (p < .001) positive correla¬
EFFECTS OF AGE OF RETIREMENT
tions with scores from tire SAS (.544) and the SDS (.538),
suggesting that stress, as defined here, was a powerful
negative experience which related to, but did not completely
overlap, anxiety and depression. The SPSR has three princi¬
pal factors: missing work, which accounts for 39% of the
variance; personal health, which accounts for 10% of the
variance; and relationship issues, which accounts for 7.9%
of the variance.
Procedure
Each participant package also included a stamped,
addressed envelop, and participants were asked to send the
completed questionnaire back to the first author. All useable
questionnaires received within 3 months were included in
the data analysis. Following that analysis, a detailed report
was sent to the Australian Retired Persons' Association,
with a suggested insert for inclusion in the ARPA newslet¬
ter.
Results
Although there were no significant differences between
males and females on any of the health measures, data from
each gender were analysed separately because these differ¬
ences are of clinical and intrinsic (if not statistical) signifi¬
cance, and because the size of each gender sample allowed
this to be performed without major risk of Type I errors. In
addition, as has been noted above, the existing literature on
retirement has been "strongly biased towards men" (Encel
& Studencki, 1996, p. 25), and several studies (e.g.,
Winocur & Rosenman, 1991) suggest that the retirement
experience is different for men and women. Hence, Table 1
presents the mean and standard deviation scores for males,
females, and the total sample for the five dependent
variables: self-rating of health (health); frequency of visits
to a medical practitioner, injuries, illnesses, or infections
(illness); SDS scores (depression); SAS scores (anxiety);
and scores on the SPSR scale (stress).
Age When Retired
Regression procedures indicated that, although none of the
dependent variables was significantly predicted by age
when retired for females, the decision to retire earlier was a
significant predictor of self-rating of men's health during
the previous three months (F = 3.924, p < .05). That is, the
earlier that men retired, the greater their chances of report¬
ing that they were in good health. Because this result may
have been an outcome of their present age (i.e., younger
men may also have been expected to be healthier), this
analysis was run again, with age at the time of completing
the survey questionnaire included in the analysis. There was
no significant effect due to present age, indicating that the
predictive validity of age when retired on their present
evaluation of their physical health was not a function of any
"youthful" comparative lack of disease or infirmity in the
present sample of male retirees.
Mean (and Standard Deviation) Scores on All Dependent
Variables
Variable Males Females Total
Health 2.19 (1.55) 2.21 (1.56) 2.20 (1.55)
Illness 5.40 (3.98) 5.70 (4.25) 5.56 (4.13)
Anxiety . 30.65 (6.64) 31.24 (7.29) 30.95 (6.99)
Depression 34.20 (8.86) 35.07 (9.37) 34.66 (9.04)
Stress 26.07 (8,45) 25.94 (8.12) 26.09 (8.27)
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
121

CHRISTOPHER F. SHARPLEY AND RENATY LAYTON
Reason for Retirement
Participants were asked to classify their reason for retire¬
ment into one of four "causes": age, illness, forced (i.e.,
because of redundancy), and voluntarily. Because this
dependent variable was categorical, MANOVA was used to
test for the presence of significant differences across the
group of four reasons for retirement. MANOVA is particu¬
larly relevant for analyses of this sort, being relatively
robust and free from weaknesses arising from violations of
assumptions which underlie other statistical procedures. As
pointed out by Glass, Peckham, and Saunders (1972), the
view that the validity of the probability and power state¬
ments from analysis of variance statistics was subject to the
three assumptions of normality, homogeneity of variance,
and independence has been shown to be incorrect. This is
further elaborated in Glass and Hopkins (1984), with
detailed arguments supporting the use of MANOVA proce¬
dures in cases such as the present data. Taking males first,
there was a significant main effect, ^(15, 933) = 3.654, p <
.001 (Wilks), and significant univariate effects for anxiety
F(3, 342) = 8.229, p < .001, depression F = 7.976, p < .001,
stress F = 5.966, p < .005, and illness F = 4.217, p < .01, but
not for health. Table 2 shows the comparative values for
each cell for each of the four dependent variables that
showed significant effects. Direct Scheffe contrasts for each
of these dependent variables indicated that men who retired
because of illness had significantly {p < .05) higher scores
for anxiety and depression than men who retired for any of
the other three reasons; men who were forced to retire had
significantly higher stress scores than men who left work
voluntarily; and men who retired because of illness also had
significantly higher scores on the illness questionnaire than
men who retired voluntarily or because of age. Women also
showed a significant main effect for reason for retirement,
F(15, 983) = 2.761, p < .001, with significant univariate
effects for anxiety F(3, 360) = 6.1%%, p < .001, depression F
= 4.170, p < .01, stress F = 6.273, p < .001, and illness F =
6.410, p < .001 (see Table 2 for these data). Scheffe
contrasts again indicated that women who retired because of
illness had significantly higher anxiety and illness scores
than women who retired for any other reason, and signifi¬
cantly higher depression scores than women who retired
because of age or voluntarily; and women who retired
because of illness or who were forced to retire had signifi¬
cantly higher stress scores than women who retired volun¬
tarily or because of age.
Pre-retirement Training
Supporting the statement made above by the Australian
Government report on preparation for retirement, only 60
(17.2%) of the 349 men sampled had participated in any
TABLE 2
Cell Values (Means and Standard Deviations) for Reason for Retirement for Each Significant Dependent Variable
Reason Anxiety Depression
Age 30.30 5.72 34.22 7.72
Illness 34.73 7.46 39.08 9.65
Forced 30.31 6.10 34.09 8.52
Voluntary 29.50 6.71 32.27 8.33
Reason Anxiety Depression
Age 31.23 7.01 35.00 10.04
Illness 35.97 9.35 39.77 10.05
Forced 30.92 7.17 35.83 9.91
Voluntary 30.22 6.64 33.96 8.62
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
122
form of pre-retirement education or training. Of these 60, 51
received financial advice only, with no other information
about social, personal, relationship, or health issues. With
only 9 men who had received "financial-plus" information,
formal statistical comparisons are not usually advisable
because of the large risk of making a Type II error.
However, for the purposes of exploring these data with a
view to setting up more formal and planned comparisons of
effects between types of training in later studies, means and
standard deviations for anxiety, depression, and stress were
calculated and are presented below. In addition, data on the
three dependent variables were compared via MANOVA.
For men who received financial advice only, means and
standard deviations for SAS, SDS, and stress scores were,
respectively, 29.4 (6.0), 34.8 (8.94), and 27.1 (9.33). For
men who received financial advice, plus information about
social, personal, relationship, and health issues, the means
and standard deviations were 27.6 (4.72), 30.1 (7.13), and
22.6 (4.73) for SAS, SDS, and stress. For men who received
no pre-retirement training or advice at all, scores were 30.9
(6.77), 34.2 (8.65), and 26.0 (8.37) respectively. MANOVA
main effects are presented in Table 3, and indicate that
extreme caution should be used when interpreting these
results because of the low estimates of power in most of
these comparisons. While there were reasonably acceptable
main effects, suggesting a significant trend towards their
being a difference in dependent variable data across the
three types of pre-retirement training, univariate compar¬
isons for men did not have sufficient power to enable firm
conclusions to be drawn. Comparisons across the three
types of training revealed similar constraints on drawing
firm conclusions, with power estimates in the region of .3,
suggesting that it was not possible to reliably detect the
presence of significant" differences in dependent variable
measures across pre-retirement training groups for men.
However, although these comparisons should be considered
exploratory at best, mean values for the dependent variables
suggest that those men who received any form of pre-retire¬
ment education or training had lower anxiety, depression,
and stress scores than men who did not receive any form of
pre-retirement training, but that this overall effect was due
to the very low scores from those men who received the
financial-plus form of pre-retirement training, with little
positive influence from financial-only training on anxiety,
and a clear negative effect for depression and stress.
Similar findings were apparent for females, where only
6 participants reported receiving financial-plus pre-retire¬
ment education or training, and 32 having received finan¬
cial-only education for retirement. Data (means, SDs) for
the women who received financial-only pre-retirement
education or training were SAS = 29.1 (5.79), SDS = 32.2
(7.2) , and stress = 26.6 (6.0); for women who received no
Males
Stress illness
25.24 7.69 4.89 3.50
28,10 S.23 7.17 4.33
28.82 8.24 5.41 3.77
24.29 8.58 5.07 4.12
Females
Stress Illness
25.90 8.31 5.38 4.27
29.14 10.06 8.46 5.00
5.35 3.62
29.15 8.50
24.34 6.87 5.46 3.92
pre-retirement education or training at all, scores were 31.5
(7.43), 35.4 (9.55), 25.9 (8.2) respectively. Women who
received financial advice plus information about social,
personal, relationship, and health issues had mean (and SD)
scores of 26.3 (6.15) for SAS, 32.3 (7.69) for SDS, and 22.7
(6.97) for stress. Again, these findings did not reach formal
significance levels, either for main or univariate effects
(Table 3), and therefore are exploratory at best. The power
values for all cross-group comparisons were also low (about
.3), again urging caution in determining that there were no
significant differences in dependent variable results across
the three forms of pre-retirement training sampled here.
Discussion
The data obtained here represent the Australian population,
with the possible exception of unskilled manual workers.
Therefore, the conclusions drawn below need to be consid¬
ered as based on trades and professional occupations as well
as managerial and administrative occupations, but not
necessarily representative of unskilled manual labourers.
The first finding of interest to psychologists from these
data is that both men and women who are forced to retire for
reasons of redundancy or ill-health are most at risk of suffer¬
ing adverse psychological reactions to retirement. Although
this is not an original finding, having been noted previously
with data from other nations, it does represent the most
recent data from Australia, where there has been compara¬
tively little attention paid to the wellbeing of the retired
person. The 1990s have witnessed many people being forced
to retire because of industrial shedding of staff, and it can be
assumed that at least a proportion of these people have been
unwilling to retire. Moreover, Department of Social Security
statistics argue that about one quarter of employees 45 years
old or more who have been retrenched fall into this category
(Department of Social Security, 1988). In terms of their
immediate psychological adjustment to this crisis, it is clear
that psychologists could help these people cope with this
unforseen and unwanted lifestyle change.
Again, as previously noted in other cultures, lack of
adequate pre-retirement education and training appeal's to
be associated with poorer adjustment to retirement.
Although this overall conclusion is extremely cautious
because of the difficulty in determining the real value of
statistical comparisons due to a high likelihood of making
Type II errors for both males and females, simple mean
values suggest that financial-only pre-retirement education
and training is only marginally better than no education or
training at all. Also extremely exploratory (and strongly
arguing for a planned comparison of pre-retirement educa¬
tion strategies) is the suggestion that financial-plus pre-
TABLE 3
Results of MANOVAs for Pre-retirement Education of
Anxiety, Depression, and Stress
Males
Main effect: F(6, 690) = 1,809, p = .095, = .681
Univariate effects (df= 2, 346):
Anxiety F= 2.107, p= .135, ,6= .415
Depression F= 1.163, p= .314, ,8= .253
Stress F = 1.281, p = .278, /? = .276
Females
Main effect: F(6, 760) = 1.806, p = .095, = .682
Univariate effects [df= 2, 381):
Anxiety F= 3.029, p = .050, p = .584
Depression F= 2.002, p = .136, = .412
Stress F= .584, p = .558, p = ,149
EFFECTS OF AGE OF RETIREMENT
retirement education is of greatest value to retirees. It must
be reiterated that these findings are very radimentary and
based on mean data values rather than formal statistical
comparisons. However, even taken with due caution, this
finding raises questions about the common practice of
restricting pre-retirement training to financial matters as a
means of lowering anxiety, depression, and stress following
retirement.
It is clear from these data (as well as from those reported
earlier by other researchers) that retirement is not the
"honeymoon" it has sometimes been described to be.
Although Atchley (1976) referred to the initial stage of
retirement as such a honeymoon, he also suggested that this
was followed by a longer period of depression. It may be
that this honeymoon-depression process is influenced by
the kind of pre-retirement education or training received,
and this issue is currently being investigated by the authors.
Of obvious relevance to psychologists is the tentative
suggestion that financial-plus pre-retirement education and
training (using the expertise of the psychologist to inform
people about to retire of the ways in which they can adjust
more effectively to this life crisis) may be superior to simple
financial-only advice schemes. Development of standard¬
ised retirement education programs has received only minor
input from psychologists to date, and this is a challenge
which faces psychologists who seek to become more
relevant to the everyday person in society as well as to those
experiencing more pressing psychological difficulties. If
technological and sociological factors push a greater propor¬
tion of the Australian population towards retirement,
adequate preparation of psychologists in issues relating to
the psychological concomitants of retirement will become a
priority of satisfactory mental health of the population at
large. Psychologist training programs in universities need to
respond to this Challenge by including retirement and its
sequelae in curricula, and to assist what are often quite
young students to come to grips with issues which may
appear to be largely irrelevant to their immediate lives.
Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. Cambridge, MA;
Schenkman.
Atchley, R. (1982). Retirement: Learning the world of work.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Sciences, 464, 120-131.
Australian Council of Social Services. (1980). Early retirement:
Blessing or curse. Melbourne: ACOSS.
Barfield, R., & Morgan, J. (1978). Trends in satisfaction with
retirement. The Gerontologist, 18, 19-23.
DeJonge, J., & Banelce, J. (1989). The Zung self-rating depression
scale: A replication study on reliability, validity and prediction.
Psychological reports, 64, 833-834.
Department of Social Security. (1988). Towards a national retire¬
ment incomes policy: An overview (Issues Paper No. 6).
Canberra; Author.
Encel, S., & Studencki, H. (1996). Retirement: A survey. Sydney:
University of NSW, Social Policy Research Centre.
Feldman, D. (1994). The decision to retire early: A review and
conceptualisation. Academy of Management Review, 19,
285-311.
Fretz, B., Kluge, N., Ossana, S., Jones, S., & Merikangas, M.
(1989), Intervention targets for reducing pre-retirement anxiety
and depression. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 36,
301-307.
Gabrys, J., & Peters, K. (1985). Reliability, discriminant and
predictive validity of the Zung self-rating depression scaie,
Psychological Reports, 57, 1091-1096.
JULY 1998 T AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
123

CHRISTOPHER F. SHARPLEY AND RENATY LAYTON
Reason for Retirement
Participants were asked to classify their reason for retire¬
ment into one of four "causes": age, illness, forced (i.e.,
because of redundancy), and voluntarily. Because this
dependent variable was categorical, MANOVA was used to
test for the presence of significant differences across the
group of four reasons for retirement. MANOVA is particu¬
larly relevant for analyses of this sort, being relatively
robust and free from weaknesses arising from violations of
assumptions which underlie other statistical procedures. As
pointed out by Glass, Peckham, and Saunders (1972), the
view that the validity of the probability and power state¬
ments from analysis of variance statistics was subject to the
three assumptions of normality, homogeneity of variance,
and independence has been shown to be incorrect. This is
further elaborated in Glass and Hopkins (1984), with
detailed arguments supporting the use of MANOVA proce¬
dures in cases such as the present data. Taking males first,
there was a significant main effect, ^(15, 933) = 3.654, p <
.001 (Wilks), and significant univariate effects for anxiety
F(3, 342) = 8.229, p < .001, depression F = 7.976, p < .001,
stress F = 5.966, p < .005, and illness F = 4.217, p < .01, but
not for health. Table 2 shows the comparative values for
each cell for each of the four dependent variables that
showed significant effects. Direct Scheffe contrasts for each
of these dependent variables indicated that men who retired
because of illness had significantly {p < .05) higher scores
for anxiety and depression than men who retired for any of
the other three reasons; men who were forced to retire had
significantly higher stress scores than men who left work
voluntarily; and men who retired because of illness also had
significantly higher scores on the illness questionnaire than
men who retired voluntarily or because of age. Women also
showed a significant main effect for reason for retirement,
F(15, 983) = 2.761, p < .001, with significant univariate
effects for anxiety F(3, 360) = 6.1%%, p < .001, depression F
= 4.170, p < .01, stress F = 6.273, p < .001, and illness F =
6.410, p < .001 (see Table 2 for these data). Scheffe
contrasts again indicated that women who retired because of
illness had significantly higher anxiety and illness scores
than women who retired for any other reason, and signifi¬
cantly higher depression scores than women who retired
because of age or voluntarily; and women who retired
because of illness or who were forced to retire had signifi¬
cantly higher stress scores than women who retired volun¬
tarily or because of age.
Pre-retirement Training
Supporting the statement made above by the Australian
Government report on preparation for retirement, only 60
(17.2%) of the 349 men sampled had participated in any
TABLE 2
Cell Values (Means and Standard Deviations) for Reason for Retirement for Each Significant Dependent Variable
Reason Anxiety Depression
Age 30.30 5.72 34.22 7.72
Illness 34.73 7.46 39.08 9.65
Forced 30.31 6.10 34.09 8.52
Voluntary 29.50 6.71 32.27 8.33
Reason Anxiety Depression
Age 31.23 7.01 35.00 10.04
Illness 35.97 9.35 39.77 10.05
Forced 30.92 7.17 35.83 9.91
Voluntary 30.22 6.64 33.96 8.62
JULY 1998 V AUSTRALIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
122
form of pre-retirement education or training. Of these 60, 51
received financial advice only, with no other information
about social, personal, relationship, or health issues. With
only 9 men who had received "financial-plus" information,
formal statistical comparisons are not usually advisable
because of the large risk of making a Type II error.
However, for the purposes of exploring these data with a
view to setting up more formal and planned comparisons of
effects between types of training in later studies, means and
standard deviations for anxiety, depression, and stress were
calculated and are presented below. In addition, data on the
three dependent variables were compared via MANOVA.
For men who received financial advice only, means and
standard deviations for SAS, SDS, and stress scores were,
respectively, 29.4 (6.0), 34.8 (8.94), and 27.1 (9.33). For
men who received financial advice, plus information about
social, personal, relationship, and health issues, the means
and standard deviations were 27.6 (4.72), 30.1 (7.13), and
22.6 (4.73) for SAS, SDS, and stress. For men who received
no pre-retirement training or advice at all, scores were 30.9
(6.77), 34.2 (8.65), and 26.0 (8.37) respectively. MANOVA
main effects are presented in Table 3, and indicate that
extreme caution should be used when interpreting these
results because of the low estimates of power in most of
these comparisons. While there were reasonably acceptable
main effects, suggesting a significant trend towards their
being a difference in dependent variable data across the
three types of pre-retirement training, univariate compar¬
isons for men did not have sufficient power to enable firm
conclusions to be drawn. Comparisons across the three
types of training revealed similar constraints on drawing
firm conclusions, with power estimates in the region of .3,
suggesting that it was not possible to reliably detect the
presence of significant" differences in dependent variable
measures across pre-retirement training groups for men.
However, although these comparisons should be considered
exploratory at best, mean values for the dependent variables
suggest that those men who received any form of pre-retire¬
ment education or training had lower anxiety, depression,
and stress scores than men who did not receive any form of
pre-retirement training, but that this overall effect was due
to the very low scores from those men who received the
financial-plus form of pre-retirement training, with little
positive influence from financial-only training on anxiety,
and a clear negative effect for depression and stress.
Similar findings were apparent for females, where only
6 participants reported receiving financial-plus pre-retire¬
ment education or training, and 32 having received finan¬
cial-only education for retirement. Data (means, SDs) for
the women who received financial-only pre-retirement
education or training were SAS = 29.1 (5.79), SDS = 32.2
(7.2) , and stress = 26.6 (6.0); for women who received no
Males
Stress illness
25.24 7.69 4.89 3.50
28,10 S.23 7.17 4.33
28.82 8.24 5.41 3.77
24.29 8.58 5.07 4.12
Females
Stress Illness
25.90 8.31 5.38 4.27
29.14 10.06 8.46 5.00
5.35 3.62
29.15 8.50
24.34 6.87 5.46 3.92
pre-retirement education or training at all, scores were 31.5
(7.43), 35.4 (9.55), 25.9 (8.2) respectively. Women who
received financial advice plus information about social,
personal, relationship, and health issues had mean (and SD)
scores of 26.3 (6.15) for SAS, 32.3 (7.69) for SDS, and 22.7
(6.97) for stress. Again, these findings did not reach formal
significance levels, either for main or univariate effects
(Table 3), and therefore are exploratory at best. The power
values for all cross-group comparisons were also low (about
.3), again urging caution in determining that there were no
significant differences in dependent variable results across
the three forms of pre-retirement training sampled here.
Discussion
The data obtained here represent the Australian population,
with the possible exception of unskilled manual workers.
Therefore, the conclusions drawn below need to be consid¬
ered as based on trades and professional occupations as well
as managerial and administrative occupations, but not
necessarily representative of unskilled manual labourers.
The first finding of interest to psychologists from these
data is that both men and women who are forced to retire for
reasons of redundancy or ill-health are most at risk of suffer¬
ing adverse psychological reactions to retirement. Although
this is not an original finding, having been noted previously
with data from other nations, it does represent the most
recent data from Australia, where there has been compara¬
tively little attention paid to the wellbeing of the retired
person. The 1990s have witnessed many people being forced
to retire because of industrial shedding of staff, and it can be
assumed that at least a proportion of these people have been
unwilling to retire. Moreover, Department of Social Security
statistics argue that about one quarter of employees 45 years
old or more who have been retrenched fall into this category
(Department of Social Security, 1988). In terms of their
immediate psychological adjustment to this crisis, it is clear
that psychologists could help these people cope with this
unforseen and unwanted lifestyle change.
Again, as previously noted in other cultures, lack of
adequate pre-retirement education and training appeal's to
be associated with poorer adjustment to retirement.
Although this overall conclusion is extremely cautious
because of the difficulty in determining the real value of
statistical comparisons due to a high likelihood of making
Type II errors for both males and females, simple mean
values suggest that financial-only pre-retirement education
and training is only marginally better than no education or
training at all. Also extremely exploratory (and strongly
arguing for a planned comparison of pre-retirement educa¬
tion strategies) is the suggestion that financial-plus pre-
TABLE 3
Results of MANOVAs for Pre-retirement Education of
Anxiety, Depression, and Stress
Males
Main effect: F(6, 690) = 1,809, p = .095, = .681
Univariate effects (df= 2, 346):
Anxiety F= 2.107, p= .135, ,6= .415
Depression F= 1.163, p= .314, ,8= .253
Stress F = 1.281, p = .278, /? = .276
Females
Main effect: F(6, 760) = 1.806, p = .095, = .682
Univariate effects [df= 2, 381):
Anxiety F= 3.029, p = .050, p = .584
Depression F= 2.002, p = .136, = .412
Stress F= .584, p = .558, p = ,149
EFFECTS OF AGE OF RETIREMENT
retirement education is of greatest value to retirees. It must
be reiterated that these findings are very radimentary and
based on mean data values rather than formal statistical
comparisons. However, even taken with due caution, this
finding raises questions about the common practice of
restricting pre-retirement training to financial matters as a
means of lowering anxiety, depression, and stress following
retirement.
It is clear from these data (as well as from those reported
earlier by other researchers) that retirement is not the
"honeymoon" it has sometimes been described to be.
Although Atchley (1976) referred to the initial stage of
retirement as such a honeymoon, he also suggested that this
was followed by a longer period of depression. It may be
that this honeymoon-depression process is influenced by
the kind of pre-retirement education or training received,
and this issue is currently being investigated by the authors.
Of obvious relevance to psychologists is the tentative
suggestion that financial-plus pre-retirement education and
training (using the expertise of the psychologist to inform
people about to retire of the ways in which they can adjust
more effectively to this life crisis) may be superior to simple
financial-only advice schemes. Development of standard¬
ised retirement education programs has received only minor
input from psychologists to date, and this is a challenge
which faces psychologists who seek to become more
relevant to the everyday person in society as well as to those
experiencing more pressing psychological difficulties. If
technological and sociological factors push a greater propor¬
tion of the Australian population towards retirement,
adequate preparation of psychologists in issues relating to
the psychological concomitants of retirement will become a
priority of satisfactory mental health of the population at
large. Psychologist training programs in universities need to
respond to this Challenge by including retirement and its
sequelae in curricula, and to assist what are often quite
young students to come to grips with issues which may
appear to be largely irrelevant to their immediate lives.
Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. Cambridge, MA;
Schenkman.
Atchley, R. (1982). Retirement: Learning the world of work.
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Sciences, 464, 120-131.
Australian Council of Social Services. (1980). Early retirement:
Blessing or curse. Melbourne: ACOSS.
Barfield, R., & Morgan, J. (1978). Trends in satisfaction with
retirement. The Gerontologist, 18, 19-23.
DeJonge, J., & Banelce, J. (1989). The Zung self-rating depression
scale: A replication study on reliability, validity and prediction.
Psychological reports, 64, 833-834.
Department of Social Security. (1988). Towards a national retire¬
ment incomes policy: An overview (Issues Paper No. 6).
Canberra; Author.
Encel, S., & Studencki, H. (1996). Retirement: A survey. Sydney:
University of NSW, Social Policy Research Centre.
Feldman, D. (1994). The decision to retire early: A review and
conceptualisation. Academy of Management Review, 19,
285-311.
Fretz, B., Kluge, N., Ossana, S., Jones, S., & Merikangas, M.
(1989), Intervention targets for reducing pre-retirement anxiety
and depression. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 36,
301-307.
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"What makes me happy now that I'm older".
A retrospective report of attitudes and strategies used to
adjust to retirement as reported by older persons.
109 people who had been retired for at least 10 years
completed questionnaires assessing their
depression-happiness, everyday stress, and their
own descriptions of what strategies they had used
to cope with stress, how successful those strategies
had been, and what advice they would give to
potential retirees. Data revealed that the sample
was more depressed than younger age groups, and
that relatively happier participants showed
significantly different ratings of sources of daily
stress than the relatively depressed participants.
Additionally, depressed participants tended to
report stress-coping strategies which were more
avoidance-oriented, whereas happier participants
reported that they were more goal-oriented and
accepted challenges and change with active
responses, a positive outlook, and physical exercise.
Similarly, when asked what advice they would give
to potential retirees, happier participants' responses
emphasised independence and ability to confront
successfully the challenge of change, while
depressed participants focussed upon ensuring
that finances were adequate. Finally, happier
retirees suggested that retirement should not
necessarily be accepted a s an unavoidable
consequence of age.
How people adjust to retirement and older
age has been the focus of a number of research studies
(e.g., Atchiey, 1976; Feldman, 1994; Muller & Boaz,
1988; Parker, 1982; Peterson, 1989; Walker, Kimmel
& Price, 1981). Several apparently consistent
predictive factors have been identified, such as
whether retirement was voluntary or forced by age or
redundancy (Walker, Kimmel & Price, 1981), poor
health (Muller & Boaz, 1988), pre-retirement
education and planning (Feldman, 1994; Homstein
& Wapner, 1985), and low expectations of being happy
Journal of Applied MealPk BekavmtA
Christopher R Sharpley
Bond University
Prisciila G. Yardley
Monash University
Send requests for reprints to: Professor C. F. Sharpley,
Institute for Health Sdences, Bond University, Gold
Coast, Qld, 4229.
in retirement (Fretz, Kluge, Ossana, Jones &
Merikangas, 1989). In a previous paper (Sharpley &
Layton, 1998) we reported that pre-retirement
education, particularly of the type that included social,
personal and health issues, was significantly
associated with lowered anxiety, stress, and depression
in the first five years after retirement.
However, the data reported in these (and most
other) studies of retirement have been collected from
people who have retired relatively recently (i.e., during
the last five or 10 years). As noted by Atchiey (1976)
with American men, and more recently in our own
work with Australian men and women (Sharpley &
Jacobs, 1997), adjustment to retirement apparently
goes through a number of stages. First, immediately
following retirement and lasting for about 12 months,
there is the "Honeymoon" period, during which
retirees feel better, engage in "those things I never
had the time for", and generally relish the retirement
experience. Following this, and lasting for about six
to 12 months, is a period which Atchiey referred to as
"Disillusionment", when retirees experience
loneliness, despair, depression, and a general lowered
health status. For men this seems to last for about six
months, but for women it has been reported as lasting
for about 18 months (Sharpley & Jacobs, 1997).
Following this unhappy period, retirees have been
reported as increasing in well-being up until about
four or five years after retirement (Atchiey, 1976;
Sharpley & Jacobs, 1997), when a general decline in
well-being occurs.
Because both Atchley's (1976) and Sharpley
and Jacobs's (1997) data were mostly restricted to the
first five years after retirement, no reliable conclusions
about the years after that point can be drawn.
However, for many people, that stage in post-
retirement represents an actual chronological age of
only about 50 to 65 years, too young to be accompanied
by the rapid decline in health and well-being which
accompanies much older persons as they approach
death. Therefore, the specific state of personal
happiness reported by older people may be associated
with attitudinal factors rather than purely physical
.Volume 1 Number 2, 1999. 31