GENERATIVITY IN MULTIPLE ROLES

Interest in the Eriksonian notion of generativity and its role in the lives of mature adults has recently increased. In the present study, w e examined generativity separately in the roles of wife, worker, and m other, and examined the utility of our strategy relative to more globa l measurement strategies in explaining variation in well-being. Two sa mples of employed mothers were studied, one sample employed in private industry and the other in a university setting. Statistical analyses demonstrated that measurement equivalence existed across the two sampl es (i.e., that the patterns and magnitudes of factor loadings did not differ significantly). For 8 of 11 indices of well-being examined acro ss the two samples, role-specific measures of generativity explained s ignificantly greater variation than did global measures.