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Managing retirement successfully 

By Karen Herland

What happens when your week is no longer ordered by 40 or so hours spent being gainfully employed? How do you organize your time, establish goals and adapt to retirement?

“I was interested in finding out what determines what different people do when they have 35-40 hours of free time each week for the first time in their lives,” said Dolores Pushkar, principal researcher for the Concordia Longitudinal Study of the Transition to Retirement: Reconstructing Life after Employment, funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Pushkar led her colleagues in the Adult Development and Aging Lab at the Centre for Research in Human Development (CRDH) in a multi-year study which tracked 360 people who had retired within the last three years to collect and analyze data on a comprehensive set of variables.

Although they had been regularly receiving written reports, the research volunteers were invited to Concordia on Oct. 24 for an update on the project. Over 75 participants and (some) friends or spouses were offered preliminary findings along with the chance to ask questions. Although all research subjects through the CRDH have the opportunity to receive reports based on the general findings of studies, only a few actually invite subjects in for discussion.

Using what Pushkar calls the Everything Model, the research team collected basic data on each participant — demographic information, reasons for retirement, health, personality markers, cognitive information and an overview of their social circle and family relationships — and analyzed that information in relation to their level of physical and social activity, stress levels, regrets, values and wisdom in an effort to determine their retirement satisfaction and quality of life.

Pushkar said the research team included several professors (along with numerous grad students) because of the need for expertise on a wide range of variables: June Chaikelson studies stress and coping, Karen Li looks at cognitive functioning, Michael Conway studies the social psychology of status and gender, Dina Giannopoulos studies depression, Carsten Wrosch examines goal adjustment and regret, and Jamshid Etezadi is an expert in data analysis.

Each year, the study participants, recruited through a range of retirement associations and ads in local media, came to Concordia to undergo a half-day of tests, in groups and in individual cognitive testing. “We mainly used standardized tests, because they are tried and true measures,” said Pushkar.

The result is “masses of data” that can be analyzed over time for the individuals involved, or compared among different retirees to determine patterns.

“It would have taken hours for me to report on everything we’ve determined so far,” said Pushkar. She did promise to produce a summary of the eight graduate theses and articles written to date to the research participants.

Several researchers, many of them grad students, presented their work at the information session. “Part of the raison d’être for the centre is to offer students hands-on experience. They need to be able to talk about research in ordinary language,” said Pushkar, adding that it is retirees themselves who can most benefit from the results.

The data collection is still ongoing. Those currently being questioned are asked specifically about the current economic downturn and whether that has directly affected them or family members. Research volunteers also had consented to have their medical records made available to the researchers and that data is expected before the end of the calendar year.

Pushkar was asked if the project will continue to collect data, once the current phase is over. Although the potential exists for another researcher to continue the work, she herself will be retiring as this phase ends.