The German Version of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)

Abstract

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is the most commonly used measure for life satisfaction. Although there are numerous studies confirming factorial validity, most studies on dimensionality are based on small samples. A controversial debate continues on the factorial invariance across different subgroups. The present study aimed to test psychometric properties, factorial structure, factorial invariance across age and gender, and to deliver population-based norms for the German general population from a large cross-sectional sample of 2519 subjects. Confirmatory factor analyses supported that the scale is one-factorial, even though indications of inhomogeneity of the scale have been detected. Both findings show invariance across the seven age groups and both genders. As indicators of the convergent validity, a positive correlation with social support and negative correlation with depressiveness was shown. Population-based norms are provided to support the application in the context of individual diagnostics.

Psychometric properties and factor structure of the satisfaction with life scale in an elderly portuguese students sample.

“…With regard to the goodness of fit index, it was shown that the model with the best fit was the second model (M 2 ). These findings are in line from previous studies on different samples: 442 American students; 697 Spanish adolescents; 1700 healthy Dutch young adults; 2180 Brazilians; 487 Israeli adults (Anaby et al, 2010;Atienza et al, 2000;Glaesmer at al., 2011;Hultell & Gustavsson, 2008;Neto, 1993) which support the unidimensional factor solution. The single factor of the five items of the SWLS had a total variance of 52.58 %.…”

“…The items are global, leading respondents to evaluate the areas of their lives according to their own values and offering general judgment on life satisfaction. The scale has been validated in many samples and in many different languages, including Swedish students (Hultell and Gustavsson, 2008), Spanish adolescents (Atienza, Pons, Balaguer y García-Merita, 2000;Neto, 1993), pregnant and puerperium women (Cabañero et al, 2004), general population (Abdallah, 1998;Bai, Wu, Zheng, & Ren, 2011;Gouveia et al, 2009), different Brazilian samples (Gouveia, Milfont, Fonseca, & Coelho, 2009), a German population (Glaesmer, Grande, Braehler, & Roth, 2011), in Hebrew (Anaby, Jarus, & Zumbo, 2010), and psychiatric and medical outpatients and the elderly (Aishvarya et al, 2014;Michalos et al, 2007). The Social Science Citation Index shows that this scale has been used in more than 4000 studies.…”

Does Michelangelo care about age? An adult life-span perspective on the Michelangelo phenomenon

“…Life satisfaction was measured with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) in its German version (Glaesmer, Grande, Braehler, & Roth, 2011). Participants rated five items (e.g., "The conditions of my life are excellent") on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).…”

A Health-Related Satisfaction with Life Scale Measure for Use with Cross-National Older Adults: A Validation Study

“…Previous studies have used confirmatory factor analysis and shown its validity and reliability in different cultural samples. Moreover, the SwLS has been equated with a general factor of life satisfaction Glaesmer et al, 2011;Gouveia et al, 2009;Neto, 2001;Sancho, Galiana, Gutierrez, Francisco, & Thomas, 2014;Silva, Taveira, Marques, & Gouveia, 2015).…”