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