Description of lifestyles and demographic characteristics

The Life Complexity Inventory (LCI; Gribbin, Schaie, & Parham, 1980) provides information on subjects’ demographic characteristics, activity patterns, work characteristics, continuing educational pursuits, and living arrangements. The LCI was initially administered by interviewers and then converted into a mail survey in 1974, and has been administered routinely (as a take-home task), since the fourth SLS cycle. Early analyses were based on the identification of eight item clusters in early work (Gribbin, Schaie, & Parham, 1980) for use in relating the LCI to the cognitive variables, these are:

1. Subjective dissatisfaction with life status
2. Social status
3. Noisy environment
4. Family dissolution
5. Disengagement from interaction with the environment
6. Semi-passive engagement with the environment
7. Maintenance of acculturation
8. Female homemaker characteristics.

Current scoring approaches are guided by results of a more recent factor analysis (O’Hanlon, 1993). The factor used in the more recent analyses represent the following eight constructs:

1. Social prestige
2. Demographic status
3. Leisure activities
4. Physical environment
5. Mobility characteristics
6. Intellectual environment
7. Social network
8. Work environment.

The leisure activities have also been factored and are scored as proportion of activity devoted to the following six types of activities:

1. Fitness activities
2. Educational activities
3. Social activities
4. Communicative activities
5. Solitary activities
6. Household chores.​