[Psychological determinants of motivation in adult education (author's transl)]

The psychology of motivation in adult education has been mostly confined to the assessment of superficial causes for attending courses and seminars. The findings were not integrated in a ced in a conclusive theory of motivation elaborated for instance by American and German psychologists. Besides that the verbalized "motives" to attend courses were hardly correlated with other psychological and social context variables. An investigation of the relationship between verbalized "motives" to attend courses, certain personality dimensions (Freiburg Personality Inventory) and some aspects of the "life space" (occupational and non-occupatoinal) revealed that the motivation to participate in adult education is embedded in the context of psychological and socio-demographic factors and that the motive structure depends on the relevance of life-long learning, for example, to keep or improve the occupational status or to meet people involved in creative activities.