Future time perspective in five life domains

Abstract

Future time perspective is a key construct in many fields of study, but operational definitions and measurement instruments differ considerably. This has led to inconsistent findings in the literature. In the present investigation, various measures of future time perspective were compared. In addition, the relationship between future time perspective and behavior was examined in five specific life domains in which future time perspective has been shown to play an important role. These domains are: financial planning, career planning, health planning, social planning and leisure planning. Broad, context-free measures of future time perspective were successful in predicting five different future time perspective scales specific to particular contexts. That said, however, domain-specific future time perspective scales were more successful than general future time perspective scales in predicting behavior in each of the five life domains. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of determining the best measure of future time perspective-which as it turned out, was dependent on the life domain being assessed.