Abstract

Recently, the theories of adult development by Levinson, Gould and other life-span developmental psychologists have proposed the notion of mid-life crisis. However, the empirical measurement of this crisis scale has not been tried thoroughly. For the initial step to construct a mid-life crisis scale (5-point rating scale) in Korea, a questionnaire of 104 items was prepared. The respondents were 299 adults(108 males and 191 females) from Seoul metropolitan area, and mean age was 43 (SD=3.92; age range 35-51). For the identification of the hypothetical construct of Mid-life Crisis, the exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Through the principal factor analysis, Scree Test and Pararell analysis, nine factors were derived and they explained 66.8% of the common variance. Through orthoblique rotation procedure, 86 items with factor loadings .34 and above were selected. These nine factors were grouped into three second-order factors( Emotional crisis, Individuation, and Life field) by higher-order factor analysis. Through the reliability measurement and item analysis procedure, the ninth factor - Change of sex-role - was eliminated and 80 items which consist of the first eight factors were finally selected.