Toward Measuring Proactivity in Person-Environment Transactions in Late Adulthood

Both a life-span developmental control perspective as well as an environmental gerontology view, particularly Lawton's notion of environmental proactivity, served as the theoretical background to suggest a new dimension of domain-specific control, namely housing-related control beliefs. The newly developed 23-item Housing-Related Control Beliefs Questionnaire (HCQ) is based on the widely used dimensions of Internal Control, External Control: Powerful Others, and External Control: Chance. In two studies of older adults (N= 485; 66-69 years and N= 107; 65-91 years), we examined the psychometric quality of the questionnaire and explored its relation with socio-structural variables, general control beliefs, and a set of housing-related aspects. Psychometric results indicate satisfactory levels of internal consistency and re-test stability in all three scales of the instrument and factor analysis supported the theoretically expected three-factor solution. Also, HCQ's external control subscales were correlated with higher age, lower education, and lower income and the correlational pattern between the HCQ and a general control measure was substantial and consistent with theoretical expectations. Relations between the HCQ and objective and subjective housing-related variables tended to be low in size. These preliminary findings suggest the potential usefulness of the HCQ as a measure to address environmental proactivity in late adulthood.