Employee Attitudes Toward Mandatory Retirement At Age Sixty Five PDF Download

This study was undertaken to investigate the following questions: 1. What differences are there in the favorableness of the attitudes toward and perceptions of aging and retirement held by government employees in Veterans Administration hospitals? 2. What factors are related directly to such differences in attitudes and perceptions? (for example, do they include anticipated retirement prestige, anticipated income, anticipated loss of income? What relation is there in terms of such factors as age, job status, nature of and attitude toward the local community, and nature of the attitudes toward the existing retirement program?) 3. What differences are there in the adequacy of the self-concepts of Veterans Administration hospital employee? 4. What factors are related directly to such differences in adequate self-concepts? 5. What is the relationship between (a) favorableness of attitudes toward and perceptions of aging and retirement, and (b) adequacy of self-concepts? 6. What implications do these patterns of relationship have for management, personnel policies, and pre-retirement counseling? Five hypotheses relative to these questions were formulated and tested. Subjects utilized were 67 Veterans Administration hospital employees, Excelsior Springs, Missouri and 73 Veterans Administration hospital employees, Kansas City, Missouri. Employees were selected by means of a stratified random sampling as follows: All employees were listed in alphabetical order with stratification by age, sex, salary, and length of service. The 140 employees were given an attitude scale of 60 items, a projective Draw Person Test and a self-evaluation test to obtain a measure of the employees' favorableness of attitudes and adequacy of self-concepts toward aging and retirement. Reliability of the rating on each test was determined by an analysis of the variance technique, rank order correlation and t̲ scores. From the results obtained, the following conclusions were drawn: 1. There was a significant relationship between employees' favorableness of attitudes and adequacy of self-concepts toward aging and retirement. Hypothesis 1 was conformed. The inter-relationship between the small town Veterans Administration employees and the urban Veterans Administration employees indicated a situational factor was involved, as the small town employees had the more favorable attitudes and more adequate self-concepts toward retirement. 2. There was a direct relationship between the way an employee preceives the company's retirement policy and program and his favorableness of attitudes toward his own retirement. This result supports hypothesis 2. 3. The intra-relationship, both hospitals, indicated the employees nearing the time of retirement had the more favorable attitudes toward retirement than did the younger employees, but had no significant effect on adequacy of self-concepts. This finding refutes hypothesis 3. 4. The inter-relationship indicated that the employees perceived the present retirement policy and program in very much the same manner. The inter-relationship indicated that the small town employees had the more adequate self-concepts. These findings refute hypothesis 4. 5. Socio-economic level had no significant influence on the favorableness of attitudes and adequacy of self-concepts toward retirement for the small town population. For the urban population, socio-economic level had no significant influence on the favorableness of attitudes toward retirement, but had a significant influence on the adequacy of self-concepts with the higher socio-economic level having the more adequate self-concepts. These findings refute part (a) of the fifth hypothesis. 6. The intra-differences in favorableness of attitudes and adequacy of self-concepts toward retirement for small town and urban population were influenced at a significant level in terms of length of service. These findings reject part (b) of the fifth hypothesis. 7. At a significant level, the male population had the more favorable attitudes toward retirement while the female population had the more adequate self-concepts. These findings refute part (c) of the fifth hypothesis.