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.

Aging With Purpose: Systematic Search and Review of Literature Pertaining to Older Adults and Purpose

“…Purpose was also reported to predict faster recovery to prestress baseline levels following exposure to an acute social laboratory stressor (Fogelman & Canli, 2015) and lower incidence of sleep disturbance (E. S. Kim, Hershner, & Strecher, 2015). A cross-sectional study of older adults found that purpose had a significant and positive relationship with self-reported health, personal growth, proactive coping, and life satisfaction (Sougleris & Ranzijn, 2011). Higher scores for purpose was also associated with greater use of preventative health-care services and screening, increased frequency of physical activity (Holahan & Suzuki, 2006;Yu et al, 2015), and fewer nights of hospitalization (E. S. Kim, Strecher, & Ryff, 2014) Two studies explored the relationship of purpose with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cognitive functioning for older adults.…”

Perceptions of Purpose in Life Within Spousal Care Dyads: Associations With Emotional and Physical Caregiving Difficulties

“…First, the psychological benefits of purpose in life may make care tasks less of a physical effort. In accord with this possibility, those with a stronger sense of purpose tend to have more energy and may be more adept at proactively coping with challenges [18][19][20][21]. Second, spousal caregivers with more purpose in life may take better care of their own health, which renders them better able to perform their care tasks.…”

“…First, we examined the links between spousal caregivers' and care recipients' feelings of purpose in life and caregivers' reports of emotional and physical difficulties from their care role. On the basis of theoretical and empirical work indicating the stress-buffering role of purpose in life (17)(18)(19)(20)(21) and that personal resources in the care dyad may affect caregivers' experience of care-related difficulties [43][44][45][46][47][48], we predicted the following:…”

“…Greater purpose in life is also associated with reduced health risk according to biological indicators (e.g., C-reactive protein, allostatic load) in cross-sectional [14,15] and longitudinal [16] research. These health benefits may in part be attributed to less physiological reactivity to stressors [17], along with the use of more proactive coping strategies [18][19][20][21] among people who perceive greater life purpose. Consequently, feelings of purpose in life may be a critical psychological resource that buffers the adverse effects of stressors encountered in one's middle and later years.…”

A Study on the Correlations among Elder Volunteers’ Participation Motivation, Happiness, and Intention of Continuous Participation

“…Volunteers' identifi cation to the organization would aff ect the intention of continuous service. Volunteers have encountered several problems and trouble in the service process, such as competition among volunteers and bad communication between organization staff and volunteers, which would reduce volunteers' intention of continuous service (Ranzijn, 2011). Apparently, the egoistic and altruistic benefi ts in the voluntary service are the key of volunteers intending to continuously participate in voluntary service.…”