VALIDATION OF THE TURKISH VERSION OF THE RETIREMENT SATISFACTION INVENTORY

Introduction: Retirement is an important milestone that indicates one's transition into the later period of life which causes one's social status to change affecting all domains of life. This study aims to provide psychometric data for Turkish adaptation of scale of Retirement Satisfaction Inventory. Materials and Method: Retirement Satisfaction Inventory measures motivation for retirement, satisfaction with life in retirement and leisure activities. The Retirement Satisfaction Inventory scale was applied to 444 Turkish pensioners with mean age of 54.12 +/- 5.67 years. Confirmatory factorial analysis and exploratory factor analysis were performed using AMOS 22 module the SPSS package respectively. Results: The adaptation of the RSI to Turkish indicated a three scale structure: the reasons for retirement, satisfaction with life in retirement, and leisure activities. These scales showed a structure with four, two and three main factors, respectively, which is slightly different from those reported in the original instrument. The confirmatory factorial analysis demonstrated the adequate fit of the model for the three scales. Conclusion: Overall, the Retirement Satisfaction Inventory Turkish RSI-T appears to be a leading valid and reliable instrument for determining the level of retirement satisfaction, reasons for retirement, and sources of retirement satisfaction in Turkish culture. However, it could be suggested that RSI should be assessed in other non-Western cultures as well.