Quine Health Quine Et Al.\'s

Quine Health

Quine et al.'s use of Mixed Methods in a Study on Retirement Choice

Retirement is one of the most challenging transitions of the life cycle. The combination of its psychological implications and the practical realities of adjusting to life on a 'fixed income' can both be powerful determinants of how one experiences, enjoys or suffers through these final years. This is the imperative driving the study by Quine et al. (2007), which primarily concerns the relationship between the preparation taken as one approaches retirement and the outcomes experienced during this stage. Its primary argument is that "many people retire early because of factors beyond their individual control, such as employment problems, health problems (of self or others) and compulsory retirement policies. Not being able to exercise choice in the retirement process has consistently been found to predict poor outcomes in retirement, including: depression, poor physical and mental health, poor adjustment and taking a longer time to adjust." (p. 173)

This is a claim that the article by Quine et al. reports as being confirmed first by a qualitative study in which 11 focus groups were conducted and as being reinforced subsequently by the findings of a quantitative study in which 601 panel respondents were surveyed on the subject of recent retirement. This latter study was conducted in a pretest and posttest format, with the latter being conducted three years after retirement. In both cases, the initial hypothesis was confirmed that those who determined to retire by choice would in almost all dimensions of their lives report to better outcomes than would those who were made to retire involuntarily.

The qualitative study would be used in order to inform the focus on the quantitative study, underscoring how Mixed Methods studies are intended to work. First the focus groups would be used to gain some understanding of how individuals were experiencing the realities of retirement, with a focus on the differentials between positive financial experiences. This would be defined a number of ways, including the presence or absence of the imperative to eventually return to work following retirement. The result would be the determination that most individuals who fell into this category of returning to work had been pushed toward retirement involuntarily before making this decision.

This would help to inform the focus on the quantitative study on which the research would base its more empirical conclusions. Here, the respondents would be gathered randomly from a sample of 7000 mature age workers, 601 retiring between 1998-1999 and subsequently qualifying for inclusion in the study. Based on the yielded conclusions of the qualitative study, Choice would be considered the primary independent variable in the quantitative survey study. This latter approach would have several distinct advantages that would make its findings valuable. Among them, the use of a pretest posttest format allowed for the ability to measure outcomes in a set sample population as these either confirmed or diverged from expectations set forth in the qualitative portion of the study.