DESCRIPTIONS OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS AND RETIREMENT ACTIVITIES DURING THE TRANSITION TO RETIREMENT

This study compares employees' descriptions of their jobs with their s ubsequent descriptions of the same jobs after they have been retired f or some time; it also compares employees' descriptions of their expect ed retirement lives with their descriptions of their lives after they have actually retired. This will aid in the interpretation of past (an d future) research about retirement that collects data only from older employees before they retire or only from retirees after they have re tired, but not from people at both times of their lives. Retirees' ret rospective reports of job descriptions agreed strongly with their prio r reports, and employees' prospective reports of their retirement acti vities agreed moderately well with their subsequent reports.