The research, led by Angélica María Londoño-Moreno of Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, together with colleagues at the University of Granada in Spain and Universidade Salgado de Oliveira in Brazil, set out to solve a persistent problem in the psychology of aging and work. Most validated measures of retirement decision-making were developed in wealthy countries with mature pension systems, and researchers have long questioned whether such instruments can be meaningfully applied in Latin America, where informal employment, lower pension coverage, and different family structures shape the end of working life. The IDA was originally developed in Brazil, and this study represents its first formal cultural adaptation and validation in two additional Ibero-American countries.

The study involved 415 participants in Colombia and 622 in Spain. The researchers followed established guidelines for the cross-cultural adaptation of assessment instruments, translating and culturally adjusting the questionnaire so that its items would resonate with workers in each country. The inventory measures four distinct orientations toward the retirement decision: anticipating retirement, which reflects a desire to leave work earlier than the legal age; retiring at the legal time, which captures the intention to exit exactly when the pension system allows; bridge employment, which describes plans to move into lighter or different work after leaving a main career; and continuing to work full-time, which represents the intention to remain in the labor force beyond retirement age.

To test whether this four-factor structure held up statistically, the team used confirmatory factor analysis with the WLSMV estimator, a robust weighted least squares approach suited to ordinal questionnaire data. The results were encouraging but nuanced. In Spain, the 13-item, four-factor model showed excellent fit to the data, with a comparative fit index of 0.978 and a standardized root mean square residual of 0.049, both well within accepted thresholds. In Colombia, the fit was more marginal, with a comparative fit index of 0.919 and a standardized root mean square residual of 0.098, and the combined sample produced an elevated root mean square error of approximation of 0.112. These figures indicate that the inventory’s core structure travels across cultures, but that some items behave slightly differently in the Colombian context, likely reflecting the greater heterogeneity of that country’s labor market.

A central question in cross-cultural psychology is whether an instrument measures the same constructs in the same way in different groups, a property known as measurement invariance. Without invariance, comparing scores between countries is statistically meaningless. Using converging fit criteria, the researchers found that measurement invariance across Colombia and Spain was supported, with one caveat: partial metric invariance was localized in a single loading on the bridge employment factor. In practical terms, this means that most of the inventory’s items function equivalently in both countries, but one item about post-retirement work arrangements is interpreted somewhat differently by Colombian and Spanish respondents. Gender invariance was also confirmed in the total sample and in Spain, while the Colombian sample showed metric invariance across gender, suggesting the instrument can be used to compare men and women within each country.

To examine whether the inventory actually measures something meaningful, the researchers tested its relationships with an external measure, the Brief Scale of Reasons to Continue Working in Retirement, known as the EMCTA-r. The pattern of correlations followed theoretical expectations with striking precision. The two exit-oriented factors, anticipating retirement and retiring at the legal time, correlated negatively with reasons to continue working, while the two continuity-oriented factors, bridge employment and continuing to work full-time, correlated positively. In other words, workers who want to leave early report fewer motives for staying on the job, and workers who plan to keep working report more of them. This coherent pattern provides strong evidence of convergent validity for the adapted instrument.

Yet beneath this shared structure, the two countries revealed a fascinating divergence. In Spain, the exit and continuity dimensions of the retirement decision behaved as bipolar opposites, with a Spearman correlation of negative 0.65 between them. Spanish workers who lean toward leaving work also tend, quite strongly, to reject continuing to work, as if the decision were a single continuum with retirement at one end and continued employment at the other. In Colombia, by contrast, the two dimensions were statistically independent. A Colombian worker can simultaneously express a desire to retire and an intention to pursue bridge employment or continued work, treating these not as contradictory options but as complementary possibilities. This structural difference, the authors suggest, reflects the different economic pressures and labor market flexibility that characterize the two nations.

Group comparisons reinforced this cultural contrast. Mann-Whitney U tests, a non-parametric method appropriate for ordinal data, showed significantly higher scores on the exit factors in Spain and significantly higher scores on the continuity factors in Colombia. Spanish workers, embedded in a mature pension system with relatively predictable benefits, appear more oriented toward a clean break from work at the legally defined moment. Colombian workers, facing a pension system in transition, including the recent Law 2381 of 2024 that established a new Comprehensive Social Protection System for old age, show stronger orientations toward remaining economically active, whether through bridge jobs or full-time work beyond traditional retirement age.

The study also provided evidence of criterion validity, particularly in Colombia. Scores on the anticipating retirement factor correlated negatively with the age at which workers said they hoped to retire, with a Spearman coefficient of negative 0.40, and the retiring at the legal time factor showed an even stronger negative correlation of negative 0.43. Employment sector was also meaningfully associated with decision profiles in the Colombian sample, with a substantial effect size for the anticipating retirement factor, measured at epsilon squared of 0.17. In Spain, these associations were weaker, which the researchers interpret as consistent with a more homogeneous retirement structure in which the timing and form of exit are more standardized across occupational groups.

The implications reach beyond psychometrics. Populations across Latin America and Europe are aging rapidly, and policymakers increasingly need reliable tools to understand when and why older workers plan to leave the labor force. An instrument that captures four distinct decision orientations, and that has now been shown to function across culturally distinct Spanish-speaking countries, offers researchers and practitioners a common vocabulary for studying retirement transitions. The team has made the anonymized data, analytic methods, and study materials openly available through the Open Science Foundation in line with FAIR principles, allowing other researchers to scrutinize and extend the work. As bridge employment and phased exits from work become more common worldwide, understanding how workers in different cultures weigh exit against continuity may prove essential for designing pension policies and career support programs that meet people where they actually are in their decision-making about the end of working life.

Subject of Research: Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Retirement Decision Inventory in Colombia and Spain

Article Title: Retirement decision inventory in Colombia and Spain: cultural adaptation and validation study

Article References: Londoño-Moreno, A. M., Belalcázar, M., Díaz-Bambula, F., Rubio, L. R., Dumitrache, C. G., Gabardo-Martins, L. M., & França, L. H. D. F. P. (2026). Retirement decision inventory in Colombia and Spain: cultural adaptation and validation study. Current Psychology, 45(17), Article 1467. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10024-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10024-9

Keywords: retirement decision, psychometrics, cross-cultural validation, confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance, bridge employment, Colombia, Spain, aging workforce, pension systems, Current Psychology, occupational psychology

The research, led by G. Bravo and colleagues including H.I. Castellucci and Martin Lavallière, comes at a moment when the demographics of work are shifting worldwide. By 2050, the United Nations projects that 16.4 percent of the global population will be 65 or older, and by 2030 roughly 20 percent of the labor force in many countries will consist of older adults. Transport is no exception. Commercial driving is physically and cognitively demanding, involving prolonged sitting, irregular schedules, sustained vigilance, and split-second decisions, all of which interact with the gradual sensory, motor, and cognitive erosion that accompanies aging. Understanding whether older professional drivers can still meet the demands of the job is therefore not an abstract question but one with direct consequences for road safety, workforce planning, and retirement policy.

The study team recruited every driver employed at two transport companies in central Chile, one passenger transport firm in Rancagua and one freight company in Concón. Of 811 drivers invited, 226 volunteered. All were men, with an average age of 51.2 years, and the sample was divided into three stages of working life: 58 younger drivers aged 30 to 44, 125 drivers aged 45 to 59 approaching retirement, and 43 older drivers aged 60 to 76. The researchers assessed body composition, grip strength, lower-limb endurance, and cardiorespiratory fitness, then administered a standardized psychotechnical test battery of the same type used by Chilean municipal transit authorities when issuing and renewing professional licenses. Work ability was measured with the Work Ability Index, a validated seven-item questionnaire that scores a worker’s capacity to meet job demands on a scale from 7 to 49.

The work ability results were striking in their uniformity. Among the 160 drivers who completed the questionnaire, 83 percent rated their work ability as good or excellent, with a mean score of 41.3. Contrary to expectations, the oldest group posted the highest average score at 42.50, compared with 41.45 for the middle group and 40.46 for the youngest. Neither simple nor covariate-adjusted regression models found a statistically significant association between age group and work ability. The authors suggest that a strong local cultural value attached to employment, providing purpose, social belonging, and family income, may help explain why older drivers perceive themselves as fully capable. The finding also aligns with prior reviews showing that age alone does not reliably predict declining work ability among professional drivers, particularly where workplace health and safety protocols are well established.

The psychomotor tests told a more nuanced story. In the lever test, which requires both hands to guide a needle along a track as quickly as possible, older drivers committed significantly more errors than their younger colleagues, averaging 6.70 errors versus 3.24, and their maximum error time was more than twice as long. After adjusting for body composition and fitness covariates, drivers aged 60 to 76 still showed an average increase of 3.19 errors and 0.69 seconds of maximum error time compared with the reference group. The bimanual coordination test, in which participants use rotary controls with both hands to steer two points along separate paths, revealed the largest gaps: older drivers averaged 35.02 errors versus 25.81 for the youngest group, an adjusted difference of 8.22 errors and 4.50 additional seconds of error time, both statistically significant.

The Lahy Dotting Test, which measures visuomotor coordination, rhythm, and concentration by requiring participants to touch black circles appearing on a rotating disk, produced a curious pattern. Older drivers achieved significantly fewer correct responses, 33.19 on average versus 37.31 for the youngest group, but they completed their correct responses faster, taking 11.22 seconds compared with 14.30 seconds for the young group. The authors interpret this speed-accuracy trade-off as consistent with age-related changes in executive function and visuospatial processing, where older participants may sacrifice thoroughness for pace. Meanwhile, the two tests most directly tied to emergency driving responses, the braking reaction time test and the speed anticipation test, showed no significant differences across age groups at all, with average braking reaction times hovering around 0.30 seconds in every group.

The absence of reaction time differences deserves particular attention. Laboratory studies of the general population consistently show that older adults react more slowly to visual stimuli, with one cited analysis finding older drivers display roughly 17 percent longer reaction times and make more than twice as many pedal errors as younger drivers. The authors suggest several explanations for the discrepancy. Professional drivers benefit from training and experience that shortens perception-to-braking latency. The controlled testing environment, in which participants knew exactly which signal to expect, may have minimized the mental load that typically exposes age-related slowing. In real traffic, where drivers must monitor intersections, pedestrians, and overtaking maneuvers simultaneously, the cognitive demands are far higher, and prior simulator studies have shown older drivers’ reaction times lengthen under mental load. The authors also note that obstructive sleep apnea, which is highly prevalent among professional drivers and increases with age, can impair vigilance and psychomotor performance, though it was not assessed in this study.

Importantly, the authors caution against interpreting poorer coordination scores as evidence of unsafe driving. All participants were active professionals who had recently passed Chile’s mandatory medical and psychotechnical licensing examinations, meaning the sample reflects a healthy-worker population. The magnitude of the observed differences was generally small, and the oldest group showed greater variability, suggesting that some older drivers perform as well as or better than younger peers while others lag further behind. Because the study did not measure on-road performance or collision outcomes, it cannot establish whether these psychomotor differences translate into safety risks. Safety managers in the transport sector often value older drivers for their work ethic, loyalty, superior trip management, and compensatory strategies such as driving more cautiously and avoiding high-demand situations, behaviors that may offset modest declines in raw processing speed.

The findings point toward targeted rather than blanket interventions. At the organizational level, the authors advocate a systemic approach built on the Total Worker Health framework, integrating health promotion, risk assessment, worker participation, and the Work Ability Index as a screening tool to monitor capacity over time. At the individual level, they propose that future studies test whether physical training targeting flexibility, coordination, and movement speed can improve performance on the specific tests that showed age-related declines, and whether educational programs combining theory with on-road practice can strengthen attention and situational awareness. The study’s limitations, including its cross-sectional design, convenience sample, all-male cohort, differential questionnaire completion across age groups, and unrecorded testing times, mean the results are hypothesis-generating rather than definitive. Still, the central message is clear: aging does not uniformly erode the capacities that matter for professional driving, and individualized monitoring, rather than age-based generalizations, is the path to keeping experienced drivers safely on the road.

Subject of Research: Age-related differences in work ability and psychomotor skills among professional heavy vehicle drivers

Article Title: Age-related differences in work ability and psychomotor skills among professional heavy vehicle drivers in Chile: A cross-sectional study

Article References: Bravo, G., Campos, A., Lavallière, M., & Castellucci, H. (2026). Age-related differences in work ability and psychomotor skills among professional heavy vehicle drivers in Chile: A cross-sectional study. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45564

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45564

Keywords: work ability, psychomotor skills, aging workforce, professional drivers, heavy vehicles, occupational health, Chile, reaction time, visuomotor coordination, Work Ability Index, road safety, cross-sectional study

The analytical framework behind the study rests on two well-established pillars of organizational psychology. The first is social identity theory, originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, which holds that people categorize themselves and others into in-groups and out-groups and then favor their own group in subtle but measurable ways. In the workplace, age functions as a powerful social identity: younger and older employees form implicit cohorts, attach stereotypes to each cohort, and interpret the same organizational events through those stereotype-tinted lenses. The second pillar is the concept of organizational climate, the shared perception employees hold about the policies, practices, and behaviors that are rewarded and expected in their organization. Prior research has shown that when the climate is inclusive of age, diversity tends to improve performance; when it is not, diversity can degrade cooperation and trust. Bennett’s study tests whether these theoretical predictions hold when younger and older American workers are asked directly about their lived experiences.

The headline finding is a strikingly symmetric perceptual divide. Older workers, those aged 50 and above, report experiencing age-based disadvantage more frequently than their younger colleagues. They describe being passed over, patronized, or assumed to lack technological fluency, consistent with a long line of research documenting ageist stereotypes that cast older employees as less adaptable, less trainable, and less valuable to invest in. Yet the same older workers are markedly more supportive of the idea that older employees should remain in the workforce for as long as they wish. In other words, the group that suffers most from age bias is also the group most committed to extended working lives, a combination that suggests older workers see continued employment as both an economic necessity and a source of identity and purpose, even while they acknowledge the friction it generates.

Younger workers tell a different story. Rather than reporting age-based exclusion, they express greater anxiety about delayed promotions and stalled career progression, a concern that researchers have long linked to perceived resource scarcity between generations. When senior positions remain occupied by employees working into their late sixties and seventies, younger workers may interpret the bottleneck as unfair competition, a dynamic documented in earlier work on intergenerational tension and subtle older-worker exclusion. The study’s results give this concern empirical weight in a nationally representative sample: younger respondents were significantly more likely than older respondents to worry that extended careers for their seniors would slow their own advancement up the organizational ladder.

A second major axis of divergence involves flexible work arrangements. Younger employees in the survey reported considerably higher engagement with flexible options, including remote work, adjustable schedules, and compressed hours, reflecting what the author characterizes as a generational shift in workplace norms rather than a simple difference in individual preference. This finding aligns with a broader body of research showing that flexibility practices interact with employee age in complex ways. Studies of hybrid and remote work have found productivity gains under geographic flexibility, while reviews of working-at-home effects note that older workers experience the health and social consequences of remote arrangements differently from younger ones. The survey data suggest that organizations offering flexibility primarily in formats designed around younger workers’ lives may unintentionally signal that these benefits belong to one cohort, reinforcing the very in-group boundaries that age-diversity programs aim to dissolve.

Perhaps the most consequential conclusion of the study is a caution against the popular corporate assumption that age diversity is automatically good for business. The analysis underscores that age diversity is not inherently beneficial; its impact depends on inclusion, climate, and proactive management. This echoes a substantial experimental and meta-analytic literature. Research on age-diversity climate has shown that age-inclusive human resource practices and the attitudes of senior leaders predict firm-level performance outcomes, while studies of age discrimination climates find negative performance consequences when bias goes unaddressed. Broader meta-analyses of workplace diversity similarly conclude that demographic differences translate into positive outcomes only under specific conditions, such as task relevance, supportive leadership, and open communication climates. The new survey results bring these laboratory and firm-level findings into the realm of ordinary workers’ perceptions, showing that the conditions for success are not yet widely met in the United States.

The practical implications for human resource leaders are concrete. Bennett points to bias-reduction strategies, inclusive flexibility policies, and cross-generational mentoring as the three most promising levers for converting potential intergenerational friction into collaborative advantage. Bias-reduction efforts draw on the intergroup contact tradition, which demonstrates through decades of meta-analysis that structured, cooperative contact between groups reduces prejudice, particularly when it unfolds under equal status and with institutional support. Mentoring programs that run in both directions, pairing older workers’ institutional knowledge with younger workers’ technological fluency, operationalize this contact principle while directly attacking the competence and warmth stereotypes that social psychology has shown people attach to both ends of the age spectrum. Inclusive flexibility, meanwhile, ensures that flexible arrangements are designed and marketed to workers of every age, preventing benefits from being coded as the property of a single generation.

The study is notable for its methodological position as one of the first nationally representative analyses to directly compare younger and older U.S. workers’ perceptions of age-related disadvantage and flexible work adoption, addressing what the author identifies as a critical gap in organizational psychology and aging research. Much of the existing evidence comes from single-firm samples, convenience surveys of older workers alone, or European datasets whose labor-market institutions differ substantially from the American context. By testing four formal hypotheses about generational differences in workplace perceptions against nationally representative data, the study provides a benchmark that future research can replicate and extend. At the same time, the cross-sectional design of the 2019 survey means the findings capture a snapshot rather than a trajectory, and the dichotomy between workers under and over 50 inevitably smooths over differences within each broad group.

Looking forward, the study closes by charting an ambitious research agenda: longitudinal designs that track how perceptions evolve as cohorts age, multi-level models that connect individual attitudes to team and organizational outcomes, and cross-cultural comparisons that test whether the American pattern of generational perception holds in societies with different retirement norms and cultural attitudes toward aging. The stakes of this agenda are rising. Labor force projections indicate that older workers will remain a growing share of the American workforce for decades, driven by longer life expectancy, changes to retirement security, and the shifting composition of available jobs. As the demographic reality of the five-generation workplace solidifies, the question is no longer whether organizations will be age-diverse but whether they will manage that diversity deliberately. The evidence from the 2019 Working Longer Survey suggests that without intentional effort, the default outcome is a workplace divided by silent, mutually reinforcing stereotypes, with older workers feeling sidelined and younger workers feeling stuck. With it, the same demographic mix could become a source of complementary skills, durable knowledge transfer, and genuine competitive advantage.

Subject of Research: Perceptions of age diversity and generational differences among younger and older U.S. workers based on the 2019 Working Longer Survey.

Article Title: Age Diversity and Workplace Perceptions: Insights from the 2019 Working Longer Survey

Article References: Bennett, J. (2026). Age Diversity and Workplace Perceptions: Insights from the 2019 Working Longer Survey. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-026-00529-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-026-00529-4

Keywords: age diversity, workplace perceptions, generational differences, ageism, flexible work, organizational climate, social identity theory, aging workforce, inclusion, extended working lives, Diversity, Workplace