Creativity Enhancement: Possibilities for Successful Aging

Abstract

Successful aging is of growing importance in the U.S. Many researchers have explored the phenomenon using various approaches, yet we are still lacking practical guidelines on how to promote successful aging in older adults. The Roy Adaptation Model supports the promotion of adaptation to chronic health problems at a time when one's overall health may be declining and is a useful guide for understanding successful aging. Current literature also suggests that functional performance and creativity are important in order to age successfully. This study examined the relationships between functional performance, creativity, and successful aging within the context of the Roy Adaptation Model. Although creativity was not significantly predictive of successful aging, functional performance was a statistically significant predictor of a successful aging indicator, purpose in life. The study was a pretest-posttest experimental design investigating the effects of a creativity enhancement intervention in older adults. Although the intervention did not appear to increase creativity or successful aging, there were some statistically significant results and valuable findings about the possibilities for creativity enhancement.

Meaning-in-Life in Nursing Home Patients: A Validation Study of the Purpose-in-Life Test

“…The PIL-scores are classified into three groups, reflecting low, medium, and high PIL; scores higher than 112 indicate the presence of definite meaning and purpose, scores between 92 and 112 are in the indecisive range, whereas the scores lower than 92 indicate a lack of a clear purpose and meaning-in-life (Crumbaugh & Maholick, 1969/1981. The PIL was translated into Norwegian by Bondevik (1997) and has been used with older adult individuals up to 103 years old (Bondevik & Skogstad 2000, Ebersole & DePaola, 1987Flood & Scharer, 2006;Sheth, 1990). Concept and concurrent validity have been reasonably well established (Crumbaugh & Henrion, 1988), and test-retest reliability has been reported to 0.83 (Meier & Edwards, 1974).…”

A Review of the Effectiveness of Creative Training on Adult Learners

“…Creativity is one of the important elements in successful aging. In fact, creativity offers a channel to cope effectively with major life changes, especially age-related physiological and functional declines (Flood & Scharer, 2006). Specifically, modern challenges necessitate the adoption of a new way of thinking, where creative problem-finding and solving plays a key role (Fontenot, 1993).…”

Implicit Religion and the Quest for Meaning

“…The present study employs the Purpose in Life Test developed by Crumbaugh and Maholick (1969), a well-established measure which pioneered research in this field and has been used in a number of recent studies, including investigating the relationship between purpose in life and: alcohol treatment (Marsh, Smith, Piek and Saunders 2003), belief in a just world (Bègue and Bastounis 2003), bullying (Stien, Dukes and Warren 2007), meditation (Kulik and Szewczyk 2002), and successful aging (Flood and Scharer 2006).…”