Middle-aged Respondents Research Articles

Metaphorical Images of Life in Young and Middle Adulthood: An Exploration

ABSTRACT We studied the metaphorical images held by educated, young to middle-aged respondents in the U.S., Canada, and China for the concepts of “life,” “being a child,” “school,” “being a teacher,” and “the universe.” Both structured format and open format responses were found to show a reasonable level of stability over a period of 1 to 2½ months. Whereas the open format predictably revealed more diverse responses than the structured format, two or three central images were readily discernible in both cases for each of the principal concepts under consideration. The specific themes appeared to be open to variations as a result of the respondent's sociocultural, cohort, and individualistic life contexts. The findings suggest that further inquiries may be able to identify prevailing metaphors and unravel their hidden yet powerful influence on human reasoning, feeling, and action.

Attitudes towards aging and physical health.

Brief narrative descriptions of four hypothetical individuals who differed in age and physical health were developed and presented to people who differed in age and sex. Each participant read only one of the four profiles. After reading the profile, the participant rated the profiled individual on the Rosencrantz and McNevin (1969) semantic differential scale of attitudes towards aging. Respondents were divided into a young group (29 years or younger), a middle-aged group (30-49 years), and an old group (50 years and older). No participant gender effects were found. All three age groups rated the older and younger profiles of persons in poor health more negatively than those describing healthy persons on each of the three dimensions of the Rosencrantz-McNeven scale. Older respondents tended to view the younger healthy profile and to a lessor extent the younger-sick profile more positively than the older profiles, but the young and middle-aged respondents viewed the older profiles more positively than the younger profiles on all three dimensions of the scale. These findings suggest that (a) a major component of negative attitudes toward the aged may be related to the more likely occurrence of physical illness in this age group, and (b) more negative attitudes toward the aged are more likely to occur in older than younger respondents regardless of health status.

In the eye of the beholder: views of psychological well-being among middle-aged and older adults.

Although the topic of psychological well-being has generated considerable research, few studies have investigated how adults themselves define positive functioning. To probe their conceptions of well-being, interviews were conducted with a community sample of 171 middle-aged (M = 52.5 years, SD = 8.7) and older (M = 73.5 years, SD = 6.1) men and women. Questions pertained to general life evaluations, past life experiences, conceptions of well-being, and views of the aging process. Responses indicated that both age groups and sexes emphasized an "others orientation" (being a caring, compassionate person, and having good relationships) in defining well-being. Middle-aged respondents stressed self-confidence, self-acceptance, and self-knowledge, whereas older persons cited accepting change as an important quality of positive functioning. In addition to attention to positive relations with others as an index of well-being, lay views pointed to a sense of humor, enjoying life, and accepting change as criteria of successful aging.

Self-perceived age changes in sex role self concept.

A prospective/retrospective study of sex role self concept was conducted in order to explore the hypothesis that adult men and women experience a convergence of sex roles in later life. Young (age seventeen to twenty-nine), middle aged (age thirty to fifty-nine), and older (age sixty to eighty-five) adults (twenty-one male, forty-one female in each group) rated themselves on Bem Sex Role Inventory items, first describing themselves at age twenty, next at age forty-five, and finally at age seventy. Self-perceived age changes in sex role self concept reported by these three groups of adults produced strikingly similar patterns. In each case, both men and women evidenced high masculine self descriptions related to middle age (projected age forty-five) followed by decreases in masculinity in later life (projected age seventy). Only the projections of middle aged respondents displayed even marginally significant evidence in favor of sex role convergence.

Comparative Evaluation of the Local Police

Analysis of a 1973 national sample of American adults indicates that the affective attitudes of whites toward local police are very positive compared to their attitudes toward 15 other well-known organizations, irrespective of the age of respondents. Sentiment toward local police among both young and old black respondents, however, is low compared to black attitudes toward the other organizations, while middle-age black respondents evaluate the police as neither worse nor better than most other organizations. Charles W. Peek and George D. Lowe are Associate Professors in the Depaitment of Sociology, Texas Tech University. Jon P. Alston is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Texas A & M University. The data reported here were made available through a grant from the Research Center Committee of the College of Liberal Arts, Texas AM Clark, 1965; Skolnick, 1966: 49-62; Niederhoffer, 1967: 1; Alex, 1969: Ch. 5; Alex, 1976: Ch. 5 and 6). Proper assessment of the degree of police isolation requires comparison of affective as well as instrumental evaluations of police to evaluations of other well-known organizations.4 Such a strategy allows a contextual interpretation of police isolation-their degree of isolation in relation to other organizations rather than measured against some arbitrary standard. Our purpose is to provide such a comparison. Specifically, we shall investigate the degree to which the general public like the local police in relation to how well they like 15 other well-known organizations. We will also examine comparative evaluations of the police within racial and age segments of the public, since the literature cited earlier suggests the most variation in attitudes toward police among these

Viewing “older people”: A comparative method-comparative sample approach

Abstract Two studies assessing perceptions of “older people” are reported. Study I compared self-perceptions of middle-class adolescents, young adults, middle-aged and older respondents on predefined personality dimensions with their perceptions of “older people”. On 6 of the 10 dimensions, the aged were perceived as different from the respondents' self-perceptions and invariably in less desirable terms. Study II used an open-ended method asking samples of university students and trainee nurses to list the five most typical characteristics of ”old people”. The results basically supported the findings of the first study. The majority of characteristics attributed to the aged were negative, and most of these seemed related to a biologically-based decline model.

Midlife marriage: sex differences in evaluation and perspectives.

Perceptions of marital relations are examined in a white middle and lower-middle class sample representing three life stages: newlyweds, middle-aged parents facing the empty nest, and persons about to retire. Descriptions of spouses are analyed in terms of positive/negative evaluations and the respective importance given to role and interpersonal components of the marital relationship. Middle aged respondents were shown to place greater emphasis on role performance than did the remaining groups, and middle-aged women gave the least positive evaluations of marriage. Midlife marital satisfaction is examined in relationship to affect toward children, socioeconomic status, value orientations, and life satisfaction.