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Life management strategies in adulthood: A cross-sectional study in Slovenia
Matija Svetina & Maja Zupančič
Full text (pdf) | Views: 35 | Written in Slovene. | Published: December 20, 2007
Abstract: General theory of life span development, as proposed by Baltes (1997), involves an interplay of three component processes or strategies that people use to cope with their everyday problems and to achieve their goals: selection refers to specification of goals (elective selection) or search for new goals when previous ones cannot be attained (loss-based selection). The second one, optimisation, refers to allocating one's time and efforts in attaining (selected) goals. The third strategy, compensation, refers to acquiring both new skills and resources to achieve the (selected) goals when goals were found hard to attain. An instrument proposed by Freund and Baltes (2002) was translated into Slovene, and applied to 651 adults aged 18 to 86 years. Both internal reliability and construct validity of the Slovene version of the instrument were found satisfactory. Further analyses showed that all strategies but elective selection decrease with age, mostly with more significant spurts in late adulthood. Analyses also revealed males to exhibit the highest level of strategy use in middle adulthood, and females to show consistent decline of strategy use throughout the adult years. Some developmental implications of these findings are discussed in the concluding section of the paper.
Keywords: life management strategies, selection, optimization, compensation, adulthood, age differences
