Participatory Versus Lecture/Discussion Preretirement Education: A Comparison

To evaluate an alternative to the lecture and discussion preretirement education model, employees were quasirandomly assigned to either a participatory learner course section, a lecture and discussion course section, or a nontreat‐ment control group. Each group was administered a pretest, a posttest, and a second questionnaire. The participatory learner group scored significantly higher than the lecture and discussion group on the 2 perceived involvement scales: perceived participation and perceived control. The participatory learner group scored higher than the lecture and discussion group on 1 of 3 information gain scales, 3 of 3 attitude gain scales, and 2 of 3 behavior gain scales. The participatory learner group scored significantly higher than the lecture and discussion group on 1 of those gain scales: attitudes toward retirement. Adjusting for either perceived participation or perceived control improved the scores of the lecture and discussion group vis‐a‐vis the scores of the participatory learner group on 13 of 18 gain scales. The results support the claim that there is a positive association between perceived employee involvement in preretirement education and attitude change, behavior change, and certain areas of information change. The results also support the claim that participatory learner preretirement education is a viable alternative to lecture and discussion preretirement education.