Stanford Researchers Tackle Questions About Aging With Purpose

Psychology Researchers, William Damon and Anne Colby, in  Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, are teaming with a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, Encore.org, on a three phased study to understand the nature and determinants of “purposeful” living in the so-called “encore” years of life, ages 50 to 75.  

The $1.8 million study was inspired by a troubling fact: Relatively few older adults have found purposeful engagements that they act on in a sustained way. Yet research suggests that there is significant untapped potential for this kind of engagement. In one recent Encore.org survey, 87 percent of older respondents said they felt a responsibility to help those less fortunate than themselves, and 70 percent said that it was important to leave the world a better place.

The projects phases include:

• Part 1 is a study to be conducted by the Stanford research team which will include a national survey and in-depth interviews to investigate how Americans with varied histories, values, needs, and opportunities make sense of their lives between midlife and old age, what they wish for, and whether they’re able to realize their aspirations. 
• Part 2 is a data collection effort to create an up-to-date database of existing programs that help people in their later years develop and maintain purposeful lives.
• Part 3 is an engagement and implementation phase, which will bring the insights of Part 1 and the resources identified in Part 2 to the general public and to many different kinds of organizations and programs that support purpose in later life. In doing so, Part 3 intends to shift popular conceptions of the encore years and strengthen institutional mechanisms that support many varieties of purposeful aging.

Thanks to Dickinson Law Professor Laurel Terry for sharing news of this interesting study.