Engagement or Withdrawal? Determinants and Consequences of Changes in Objectively Measured Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviours across the Retirement Transition.

Retirement from paid work may affect the time that is spent in sedentary or physically active behaviours, but the empirical evidence is mixed largely due to lack of objective and longitudinal data.

How retirement affects physical activity for different groups of individuals is of concern for public health, as this in turn may substantially affect health and wellbeing in later life.

The aim of this project is therefore to examine changes in objectively measured movement behaviours over retirement along with their occupational determinants and consequences for sleep, health and wellbeing.

This will be done using data from the Swedish Retirement Study (SRS), the HEalth, Aging and Retirement Transitions in Sweden (HEARTS), the Finnish Retirement and Aging study (FIREA) and the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH).

The specific objectives are to: 1) Examine changes over retirement in  a) the absolute and relative time allocation to sleeping, sedentary activity, light, moderate and vigorous physical activity,  b) the number of prolonged bouts of sedentary behaviours as well as sustained episodes of physical activity and exercise,  c) fluctuations in mood and mental fatigue during the day. 2) Study the role of occupational physical activity, full- or part-time retirement and other life events and circumstances as determinants of changes in overall physical activity (including leisure-time) and sedentariness across retirement. 3) Analyse how wellbeing, mood, fatigue and sleep are affected by  a) changes in patterns of physical and sedentary activity across retirement,  b) physical activity at different times of day before and after retirement using both individual differences and within-person day-to-day variation.

In all analyses, potential gender differences will be examined using stratified analyses and/or interactions, because older women generally show higher activity levels than men but may reduce their activity to a larger extent at retirement.