Scaling Adjustment in Older People

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Adjustment (personal or social) has often been the object of research in social gerontology. Currently this interest is expressed in the study of life satisfaction and psychological well-being. The present study explicates adjustment in terms of three referents: life satisfaction, social adjustment, and personal adjustment. Each aspect of adjustment is meaningful only when elderly people's reports are compared to explicit normative bases. A discussion of advantages and disadvantages of several proposed scaling bases is illuminated by an empirical example. Interview responses indicating personal orientation and self-reports on social activity are combined in a personal adjustment score. An empirical test demonstrates that personal adjustment and happiness are unrelated to one another in sample data.