Scientific background: Life Satisfaction

About this test

The Satisfaction With Life Scale was developed in 1985 by Ed Diener and colleagues as part of research into subjective well-being. It's considered the standard instrument for measuring global, cognitively-evaluated life satisfaction, and is deliberately distinguished from the emotional component of well-being (positive/negative affect). The scale shows high internal consistency across numerous studies and stable test-retest reliability appropriate for a trait measure, while still being sensitive to change -- for example, over the course of therapeutic interventions. The bands below follow the interpretation ranges Diener himself publishes ("Understanding SWLS Scores"), based on the scale's 5-35 point range.

The original study reported a Cronbach's alpha of .87 and a two-month test-retest correlation of .82. A meta-analysis pooling 60 studies confirms good internal consistency on average (alpha ≈ .78) across a very wide range of countries, languages, and age groups -- evidence that these five, deliberately broad items hold up robustly across cultural contexts, which isn't a given for such a short instrument.

Dimensions

Sources & license

• Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71–75.

  The scale is copyrighted by Ed Diener but is free to use without separate permission for research and clinical/practitioner purposes, for non-commercial use, as long as the original authors are credited. Item wording, response-scale anchors, and the official interpretation bands were verified against Diener's own "Understanding Scores on the Satisfaction with Life Scale" document.

  https://eddiener.com/satisfaction-with-life-scale-swls