Correlates of Changes in Desired Control Scores and in Life Satisfaction Scores among Elderly Persons

This report describes the correlates of Life Satisfaction and Desired Control among seventy-nine elderly residents, with an average age of seventy-eight, of a partial-support apartment complex. The residents were assessed at three points in time: shortly after moving into the building, six months later, and after a total of eighteen months. Both Life Satisfaction and Desired Control (a measure of the extent to which a person reports control over desired outcomes) are intercorrelated and related to other indices of psychological well-being at all three points in time. Cross-lag correlations also indicate an enduring relationship between Life Satisfaction, Desired Control, Activity, and Rated Vitality. A residual regression analysis employing hierarchical procedures for evaluating significance of added variance yielded only one predictor of changes in Life Satisfaction: an initial measure of psychomotor speed. The residual regression analysis yielded one predictor of changes--[in Desired Control--initial activity level.]