Evaluated time: a life course perspective.

Evaluated time is a dimension of time perspective which has received minimal attention from researchers; it subsumes those constructs dealing with the affective tone, or feelings, placed upon different points of the life cycle. Using data from a cross-sectional study of 216 men and women aged 16 to 67, a variety of approaches to the study of evaluated time were examined. Evaluations were found to differ by the respondents' stage of life and by sex, with older respondents and women generally being more optimistic in their perceptions of later life. For example, while all the younger respondents viewed old age more negatively than other periods, older respondents drew a distinction between the young old and the old old. The former period was protrayed as a time of continued satisfaction.