Age,Deprivation,and Personal Competence

Abstract

There is difficulty in developing conceptual models that apply through-out the adult years. For example, that of Campbell et al. (1976) accounts for the behavior of people aged 18-54, but not those older. Their findings of positive response bias in satisfaction with conditions of everyday living, not only in the old but also in the poorly educated and those with low incomes, suggests that concepts of deprivation and sense of personal competence are needed in a model that will include the elderly. The inadequacy of the Campbell et al. model for older persons may derive from age-related differences in these variables. In this study of four samples of people 60 and older (the group whose data most poorly fit the Campbell et al. model), sense of personal competence and situational deprivation accounted for statistically significant and meaningful amounts of variance in domain satisfactions and in overall well-being, supporting the need to include them in explanatory models relevant to older people.