Driving Retirement

Contemporary research indicates that elderly womenand men view driving retirement as a negativeexperience with numerous disabling consequencesresulting in decreased quality of life. Scholarshipon successful aging, however, shows that seniorsgenerally define aging neutrally or positively.Researchers have relied upon quantitative researchmethods that lack the kinds of rich descriptionsgleaned from qualitative inquiries. Reducing drivingretirement to a finite list of negative consequencesdoes not fully convey meanings and lived experiences.Driving retirement also has not been studiedsystematically against a sociocultural backdrop thatcould foster understanding within historical,cultural, and social contexts. Thus, qualitativeresearch methods were employed in this study toexplore participants self-defined meanings ofdriving and driving retirement. Driving retirementresulted in three categories of subjective phenomenaincluding negative, positive, and mixed consequences.The discoveries of positive and mixed effects providenew perspectives not previously reported in theliterature.... Mehr