Finally, it Is Asked if

¶ … Finally, it is asked if the conclusions drawn in the article are warranted. The article chosen was the Schellenberg and Silver about retirement preferences and experiences as juxtaposed against real-world experience.

Questions Answered

The research is indeed applicable even if the conclusions drawn are not terribly complex or illuminating. Basically, it's a survey of post-retirement experiences of people in Canada as compared to what they want to do, what they prefer to do and the obstacles that present themselves with all of the above such as reduction in pension benefits and other limitations that make working for income counter-productive or even outright hurtful to a person's income and standing (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

One major limitation to applicability to the research is that it happened a decade ago and the starting point of the time horizon used was 1992. A whole lot has happened since then including the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the ensuing economic recession that happened in many corners of the world just after that, the even bigger recession that occurred from 2007 to 2009 and that many corners of the world are still suffering or at least lagging from and so forth. Things like economic crashes, stock market crashes, and fundamental changes in the overall landscape of the economy, the availability of jobs and so forth has literally changed everything to some manner or degree (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

Another factor that has aggravated since 2002 (the end point of the study), let alone 1992 (the starting point of the study) is the financial solvency of pensions, both public and private…public in particular, over the last two decades. This study and its associated surveys would have to be entirely redone in a post-Great Recession and global economic crisis world to see if anything major has changed and the answer to that question will most certainly be a "yes"…it's just a matter of what exactly is in play and what is not (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

As far as how generalizable the research is, the answer to that question is much the same as the answer to the last question. While it very well may have stood the test of time in the late 1990's and perhaps the early 2000's, the economic and social travails (let alone the wars and terrorist attacks that have struck quite close to Canada in one or more ways), it really couldn't be generalized to any time period outside of 1992 to 2002, the time window for the study. The world-wide events of 2001 and 2007-2009 alone prove that to be the case (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

Despite the reservations above, the conclusions drawn are fairly solid and can probably be applied at least in part to the modern day but some shifting may be needed. For example, the verbiage about people being ready (or not ready) to withdraw from the workforce, the presence of a solid pension and whether/when a person is at the top of their earnings capacity are all valid questions that are still present even today (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

However, as noted above, a whole heck of a lot has happened since 2001 and that was the year before the end of the study and a lot of fallout, shifting and changing in opinions and work habits have changed. For example, the author of this report knows from news reports that a lot of people in the United States have left the workforce and this would certainly have a bearing on these results for other countries like Canada. Also, many countries public pension programs and/or pensions for public employees are increasingly in peril. The United States is another example of that with public pensions getting more and more insolvent and their Social Security and Medicare programs hemorrhaging money quite quickly with many pundits saying that the programs will run out of money in 1-3 decades at best. Other countries like Canada and much of Europe are having much the same problem in their own ways.

However, this study does have a lot going for it. First, they did the study over an entire decade and they surveyed a lot of people for the study. There were 25,000 responses and about 4,500 were included in the final results according to the "what you should know" section on the first page of the article. The time horizon and the size of the study are both very good in terms of size and length so those are major pluses for this study (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

One downside is that getting into "preferences" and other fairly gray areas can be fairly problematic in research because viewpoints can change by the month, the week or even the year. Things can change overnight. Perhaps a lot of that was absolved by the fact that the study was done over such a long time horizon but the fickleness of the study respondents as well as the possibility that they are themselves conflicted and unsure about the opinions they are offering is something that cannot be ignored (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).

Put another way, research that is clearly at least partly qualitative in nature is very dangerous because anecdotes and other non-qualitative opinions and stories are very hard to trust and put a lot of faith in. The study being reviewed here used a very large sample size but that does not eliminate all of the potential problems. One major issue is an effective translation between opinions and viewpoints and the facets of logic and common sense (Schellenberg & Silver, 2004).