Engagement in Adulthood: Perceptions and Participation in Daily Activities

Abstract

The present research explores how older adults experience daily activities through an application of the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Kreuger, Schakade, Schwartz, & Stone, 2004). Throughout the course of the day, individuals (N = 192, M = 72 years) spent an average of 14.50 hours engaged in a variety of activities. Individual differences in activity patterns could be partly explained by age and educational attainment. The oldest individuals (age 81–92) perceived lower levels of competence when engaging in daily activities. Regardless of age, however, individuals with greater educational attainment allocated more time and felt more intellectually challenged in their daily experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• activity patterns
• daily experiences
• engagement
• aging
• adulthood

This work was supported through the National Institute on Aging (R03 AG024551 and R01 AG029475 to Elizabeth Stine-Morrow) and the Roybal Center for Healthy Minds (P30 AG023101 to Jeanine Parisi). Additional support was obtained through dissertation research awards granted to Jeanine Parisi by the American Psychological Association and the Bureau of Educational Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Parisi is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is supported by a National Institute of Mental Health Prevention Research Training Grant (T-32 MH018834; Nicholas Ialongo, Principal Investigator).

A very special note of appreciation goes to Dr. Elizabeth Stine-Morrow and Drs. Megan Janke, Daniel Morrow, and Laura Payne for being so willing to lend their time, encouragement, and thoughtful insight throughout the entire course of this research.

Notes

notes

1. In initial analyses, we did not find any significant difference in terms of activities or experiences between those individuals that were fully retired (n = 166) and those that worked part time (n = 22). All individuals reported activities for a nonworking weekday.

2. Based on ratings made on a 7-point scale (0 = not at all; 6 = very much), experiential ratings were defined as follows: 0–2.9 (low), 3–3.9 (moderate), and 4–6 (high).

3. A univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the four cohorts (60–66, 67–73, 74–80, and 81–92 years) did not differ on the number of years of formal education, F(3, 191) = 1.42, p = .24.