Approaching Young Adults' Future Conceptions of Life in Old Age: Methodological Challenges

Due to demographic changes such as increased life expectancy and declining birth rates European societies are currently often labelled as “aging” societies. For scientists, politicians and journalists the changing age structure is not merely a positive development, but with regard to pension-insurance-systems it is often discussed as a severe societal challenge. In this context individuals are confronted with the advice to start planning for old age rather sooner than later (Ekerdt 2004). This claim is in line with processes of individualization, in which the own biography should permanently be (re-)constructed, planned and therefore turns to a “biographic project” (Hardering 2011). From a sociological point of view it is highly relevant to analyze what kind of future concepts young adults develop concerning their life in “old age”, which processes play a role in forming future concepts and moreover how those future concepts may be interconnected with concrete planning activities for old age. Drawing on material from my ongoing PhD project, in which interviews with young adults in Austria are conducted, this paper is going to focus on methodological challenges emerging when studying young adults’ long-term future concepts, e.g. how to deal with the vagueness of future concepts for old age. Further, it shall be discussed how the interconnectedness of future conceptions and biographical decision-making can be approached empirically by relying on a phenomenological perspective (Schütz).