Investigating the Role of Coping Strategies, Purposefulness in Life, and Quality of Life in Marital Adjustment of Retirees

In the retirement age, people experience conflicts and marital problems as they go through one of the transitional stages of life and spend more time at home and face new sources of stress. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the role of coping strategies, purposefulness in life, and quality of life in the level of marital adjustment in retirees.
The present study was a correlational survey. The population consisted of 200 retirees of Nahavand during year 2016, selected by simple random sampling method, as the study sample. The research tools were Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), Meaning of Life Questionnaire (MLQ), Marital Status Inventory and WHO Quality of Life (WHOQOL-26), and Golombok-Rust marital status inventory. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis.
The results showed that there was a negative correlation between task-oriented strategy and marital adjustment (-0.22), a significant positive correlation between emotion-oriented strategy and marital adjustment (0.20), and a significant negative correlation between the avoidance strategy and marital adjustment (-0.19). Meaning of life was also negatively correlated with marital adjustment (-0.37). Quality of life had a moderate negative correlation with marital adjustment (-0.46). The results of multiple regression analysis showed that coping strategies, meaning of life, and quality of life with multiple correlation coefficient of 0.56 could significantly predict 31% of marital adjustment variance.
According to the results of the current study, effective coping strategies, meaningful life, and good quality of life are predictors of marital adjustment in retirees. Consideration of these issues is necessary for employees of government and nongovernmental organizations, who are on the brink of retirement, in order to cope with marital problems during the retirement period.