GENDER DIFFERENCES IN RELATING LIFE EVENTS AND WELL-BEING IN ELDERLY INDIVIDUALS

Two hundred and sixty-eight community-residing elderly participants co mpleted measures of physical illness, psychiatric symptomatology, life satisfaction, and recent mood, and a modified version of the Rahe (19 75) Recent Life Change Questionnaire on which they indicated how much adjustment each event experienced required and whether it was appraise d as expected or unexpected, desirable or undesirable, and controllabl e or uncontrollable. The results suggest that: (I) scores that reflect how events were appraised accounted for more variance than total freq uency scores; (2) optimal predictors differed for different outcome me asures; and (3) there are substantial gender differences in the patter n of relationships of predictor to outcome variables, The first two fi ndings are consistent with those reported for younger cohorts. The thi rd finding has not been reported previously.