Control Strivings

Short Description: The goal of this project is to quantify the motivational and self-regulatory strategies people use to meet the challenges they face throughout life. Drawing from the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development (Heckhausen et al., 2010), we distinguish control strivings related to goal engagement from those related to goal disengagement and goal reengagement and assess these in key domains of life: work, family, and health.

Methodological Details: The same set of 14 self-report items was given three times, each time referring to one of three domains of life (work, family and health). Examples include “When I find it impossible to attain a goal, I try not to blame myself.” and “When I cannot solve a problem by myself, I ask others for help.”

Available Papers
  • Schöllgen, Ina, Denis Gerstorf, and Jutta Heckhausen. 2014. Control Strivings in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). SOEPpapers 727 . Berlin: DIW Berlin;

  • Hommelhoff, Sabine, David Richter, Cornelia Niessen, Denis Gerstorf, and Jutta Heckhausen. 2019. Being Unengaged at Work but Still Dedicating Time and Energy: A Longitudinal Study. Motivation Science (online first). (https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000155) (Pre-published 2019: SOEPpapers 1048 . Berlin: DIW Berlin)

Contact

Syear

Respondents

Dataset

Variables

Availability

Field

Method

Replication

Denis Gerstorf (Humboldt University of Berlin), Jutta Heckhausen (University of California)

2012

2052

inno

csm0412, csm1204, csm0403, csm0804, csm0410, csm07, csm1210, csm0102, csm1208, csm0810, csm0802, csm0404, csm1211, csm03, csm0502, csm0806, csm1202, csm06, csm0803, csm1209, csm0808, csm1207, csm0811, csm0805, csm0401, csm1203, csm0407, csm1206, csm11, csm0408, csm0812, im_csm_pre, csm0402, csm0801, csm0405, csm0409, csm1201, csm1212, csm1205, csm0406, im_csm, csm0411, csm0902, csm02, csm0807, csm0809, csm10

04/2015

Psychology

Survey items