Review of the Satisfaction With Life Scale

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was developed to assess satisfaction with the respondent’s life as a whole. The scale does not assess satisfaction with life domains such as health or finances but allows subjects to integrate and weight these domains in whatever way they choose. Normative data are presented for the scale, which shows good convergent validity with other scales and with other types of assessments of subjective well-being. Life satisfaction as assessed by the SWLS shows a degree of temporal stability (e.g., 0.54 for 4 years), yet the SWLS has shown sufficient sensitivity to be potentially valuable to detect change in life satisfaction during the course of clinical intervention. Further, the scale shows discriminant validity from emotional well-being measures. The SWLS is recommended as a complement to scales that focus on psychopathology or emotional well-being because it assesses an individuals’ conscious evaluative judgment of his or her life by using the person’s own criteria. The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in research on the construct of subjective well-being (SWB; Diener, 1984; Diener & Larsen, 1993). This research has begun to provide an important complement to one of psychology’s traditional goals: the understanding of unhappiness or ill-being in the form of depression, anxicty, and unpleasant emotions. The addition of a positive orientation toward the individual’s subjective experience of well-being provides an additional perspective for researchers and clinicians alike. Research has identified two broad aspects of subjective well-being: an affective component, which is usually further divided into pleasant affect and unpleasant affect (Diener, 1990; Diener & Emmons, 1984), and a cognitive component, which is referred to as life satisfaction (Andrews & Withey, 1976). When assessed, these components of SWB are at least moderately correlated, and a number of measures of SWB include both components (Chamberlain, 1988). Several researchers, however, have found separate satisfaction and affect components (Andrews & Withey, 1976; E. Diener (B) Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. Diener (ed.), Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener, Social Indicators Research Series 39, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-2354-4 5, C © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 101 102 W. Pavot and E. Diener Judge, 1990; Liang, 1985; Stock, Okun, & Benin, 1986). These components appear to sometimes behave differently over time and to have differing relationships with other variables (Beiser, 1974; Campbell, Converse, & Rogers, 1976; DeHaes, Pennink, & Welvaart, 1987). The affective and cognitive components of SWB are not completely independent; however, the two components are somewhat distinctive and can provide complementary information when assessed separately. Although the affective and cognitive aspects of SWB both appear to be important, researchers have focused their attention on the measurement of affective wellbeing, as evidenced by the number of instruments that measure affect. For example, mood and affective well-being can be assessed by the Affectometer (Kammann & Flett, 1983), the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), or the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness (MUNSCH; Kozma & Stones, 1980), among others. Scales to measure unpleasant affect (e.g., depression) are also widely used (e.g., Beck, Ward, Mendelson, Mock, & Erbaugh, 1961). Generally, the life satisfaction component of SWB has received less attention (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). Because life satisfaction frequently forms a separate factor and correlates with predictor variables in a unique way, it seems worthwhile to separately assess this construct. Life satisfaction refers to a judgmental process, in which individuals assess the quality of their lives on the basis of their own unique set of criteria (Shin & Johnson, 1978). A comparison of one’s perceived life circumstances with a self-imposed standard or set of standards is presumably made, and to the degree that conditions match these standards, the person reports high life satisfaction. Therefore, life satisfaction is a conscious cognitive judgment of one’s life in which the criteria for judgment are up to the person. Although there may be some agreement about the important components of “the good life,” such as health and successful relationships, individuals are likely to assign different weights to these components (Diener et al., 1985). Individuals are also likely to have unique criteria for a good life as well, which in some cases might outweigh the common benchmarks in importance. Furthermore, individuals may have very different standards for “success” in each of these areas of their lives. Thus, it is necessary to assess an individuals’ global judgment of his or her life rather than only his or her satisfaction with specific domains. This is the strategy adopted by the authors of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985). The SWLS items are global rather than specific in nature, allowing respondents to weight domains of their lives in terms of their own values, in arriving at a global judgment of life satisfaction. At the same time, it should be recognized that assessing respondents’ satisfaction with common domains may also provide useful additional information (Frisch, Cornell, Villanueva, & Retzlaff, 1992). There is evidence that satisfaction often forms a factor separate from affective indexes of well-being. If affect depends on appraisals, why do cognitive and affective measures form separate factors? First, people may ignore or deny negative emotional reactions while still recognizing the undesirable factors in their lives. Second, affective reactions are often responses to immediate factors and of short duration, whereas life satisfaction ratings can reflect a long-term perspective. Finally, a Review of the Satisfaction With Life Scale 103 person’s conscious evaluation of her or his life circumstances may reflect conscious values and goals. In contrast, affective reactions may reflect unconscious motives and the influences of bodily states to a greater extent than do life satisfaction ratings. Nevertheless, there should be a degree of convergence between life satisfaction and emotional well-being because both depend on evaluative appraisals. The SWLS is designed to assess a person’s global judgment of life satisfaction, which is theoretically predicted to depend on a comparison of life circumstances to one’s standards. The brief format of the SWLS means that it can be incorporated into an assessment battery with minimal cost in time. Work on the Extended Satisfaction With Life Scale by Alfonso & Allison (1992b) has indicated that the SWLS is at the reading level of the 6th to 10th grades (depending on the scoring system used) and is thus usable with most adults. The five items of the SWLS and scoring instructions are presented in the Appendix. Characteristics of the SWLS