Understanding Retirement Requires Getting Inside People’s Stories: A Call for More Qualitative Research

Abstract

Quantitative research, using surveys and archival data, has contributed much to the field’s understanding of the retirement transition, the factors influencing it, and its consequences. In this commentary, I argue that, in order to move to a deeper understanding of retirement decisions, retirement processes, and retirement experiences, researchers must add rigorous qualitative studies to their portfolios. Only by asking open-ended questions of people approaching, moving through, or living in retirement can we illuminate deeper psychological issues such as identity maintenance and change, the reconstruction of life narratives and structures, the reciprocal influence of relationships on individual decisions and experiences, and the confrontation of existential questions about the meaning of one’s life.