| The productive aging paradigm emphasizes the importance of continued engagement in productive roles for maintaining health and vitality in later life. The word "engagement" is frequently used within this literature to refer to physical engagement with a role---or one's involvement in the categorical sense. However, psychological engagement---or one's subjective experience of a role as positive, meaningful, invigorating, and inspiring---is less frequently discussed. While there is a well-developed body of knowledge on the antecedents and consequences of psychological engagement with paid work, little is known about the role of age or age-related factors in these relationships. This dissertation begins to fill this gap in the knowledge base by drawing upon important insights from the business management and industrial/organizational psychology literature to understand factors that may contribute to and/or detract from older adults' ability to psychologically engage in work roles and whether these relationships vary for older adults (age 50 or older, n = 543) compared to midlife (age 35 to 49, n = 653) or younger adults (under age 35, n = 664). Results of multi-level regression analyses suggest that personal resources (i.e., core self-evaluations) and job resources (i.e., task variety, autonomy, friendship, task identity, task significance, supervisor support, job security, inclusion in decision-making, opportunities for learning and development, and team culture of flexibility) were main predictors of engagement for older adults as well as midlife and younger adults. Interestingly, the strength and nature of several of the job resource-engagement relationships were dependent upon job demands and/or core self-evaluations for older adults; however, in general, this was not the case for younger or midlife adults. Age differences remained even after controlling for several factors that could account for age-based differences in predictors of engagement (e.g., tenure). These findings provide a fuller understanding of the conditions that promote or impede psychological engagement with work in later life and will help policymakers and practitioners to better recognize and advocate for work contexts that maximize well-being for older adults. |
