• 7 - Strongly agree
• 6 - Agree
• 5 - Slightly agree
• 4 - Neither agree nor disgree
• 3 - Slightly disagree
• 2 - Disgree
• 1 - Strongly disgree

____ The conditions of my life are excellent.

____ I am satisfied with my life.

____ So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.

____ If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

• 35 - 31 Extremely satisfied
• 26 - 30 Satisfied
• 21 - 25 Slightly satisfied
• 20        Neutral
• 15 - 19 Slightly dissatisfied
• 10 - 14 Dissatisfied
•  5 -  9   Extremely dissatisfied

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a field of psychology that attempts to understand people's evaluations of their lives. These evaluations may be primarily cognitive (e.g., life satisfaction or marital satisfaction) or may consist of the frequency with which people experience pleasant emotions (e.g., joy, as measured by the experience sampling technique) and unpleasant emotions (e.g., depression). Researchers in the field strive to understand not just undesirable clinical states, but also differences between people in positive levels of long-term well-being. The article briefly reviews research on measuring SWB, on the demographic correlates of it, and cultural differences in reports of SWB. We also describe influences on SWB such as temperament, and theoretical models of SWB (e.g., context approaches).

This article reports the development and validation of a scale to measure global life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Among the various components of subjective well-being, the SWLS is narrowly focused to assess global life satisfaction and does not tap related constructs such as positive affect or loneliness. The SWLS is shown to have favorable psychometric properties, including high temporal reliability. Scores on the SWLS correlate moderately to highly with other measures of subjective well-being, and correlate predictably with specific personality characteristics. It's noted that SWLS is suited for use with different age groups and other potential uses of the scale are discussed.

A flood of new studies explores people's subjective well-being (SWB). Frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and a global sense of satisfaction with life define high SWB. These studies reveal that happiness and life satisfaction are similarly available to the young and the old, women and men, blacks and whites, the rich and the working-class. Better clues to well-being come from knowing about a person's traits, close relationships, work experiences, culture, and religiosity. We present the elements of an appraisal-based theory of happiness that recognizes the importance of adaptation, cultural world-view, and personal goals.

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 (e.g., 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 individual's conscious evaluative judgment of his or her life by using the person's own criteria.