Proactive Coping in Community-Dwelling Older Australians

Abstract

This article reports on a study of older community-dwelling Australian adults which aimed to test whether a relatively unexplored construct, proactive coping, could have a role in purpose in life, personal growth, and life satisfaction. A total of 109 women and 115 men (Mean age = 75.04 yrs, SD = 6.66) completed a questionnaire containing Greenglass et al.'s (1999) Proactive Coping Inventory, the Purpose in Life and Personal Growth subscales of Ryff's (1989) Psychological Well-being Scales, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985). The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that proactive coping was a highly significant predictor of all three measures of well-being, after controlling for age and health. The effect on personal growth and purpose in life was particularly strong. Proactive coping does seem to be an important variable in the psychological well-being of older adults. However, the correlational nature of the design, and the likelihood of some conceptual overlap between the well-being variables, suggest that these inferences can only be tentative. Designing psychological interventions to improve proactive coping may help to improve quality of life at older ages. There is a need for experimental research to further explore the causal influence of proactive coping and for further theoretical work to determine the exact nature of proactive coping.