Test To Assess Your Satisfaction With Life (SWLS)

The test to assess your satisfaction with life (SWLS) is still the most used instrument to know our level of happiness. Created in the 80s by psychologists Ed Diener, Robert A. Emmons, Randy J. Larsen and Sharon Griffin, it stands as a very interesting resource to obtain reliable information on the level of satisfaction of adults, adolescents and different social groups of any country and culture.

Confucius said that where there is satisfaction there are no revolutions. This idea contains in itself a truth and also a problem. The truth is, when you feel good about who you are and what you have, there is no need to search or do anything else. However, as we well know, something like this is not always easy to achieve; With which, people are almost always forced to initiate small or large revolutions to wrap ourselves in that longed-for well-being.

Having scales like this test allows us, among other things, to know what is wrong in a society. Also, understand what areas of our life we ​​lack to explore, work or mature. Therefore, we could say that satisfaction, more than a state, is a process in continuous construction ; therefore, having this resource is of great help, both for the area of ​​psychological intervention and in any scenario of social research.

Let’s delve into this test to find out what it consists of.

Features, application and reliability

How could we define satisfaction with life? The issue is not simple. There would be those who would anticipate when saying that this state is reached with a good job and a checking account. Others would point out that happiness is next to the person we love and who loves us. In this sense, nothing is so subjective, particular and singular as the own satisfaction.

Each mind is a world and each world a micro-universe inhabited by needs, priorities, tastes and anxieties. Frederic Bartlett, an experimental psychologist at the University of Cambridge, used to say that our lives are made by our thoughts and everyone can be living in a paradise or a hell even having the same bank account as the richest man in the world.

Therefore, when evaluating this dimension, Ed Diener, Robert A. Emmons, Randy J. Larsen and Sharon Griffin were clear that they had to raise a series of very general questions that went beyond material and even affective aspects. Hence, the test to assess your satisfaction with life (SWLS) is based on cognitive judgments, on what each person, within their particularity, values ​​what they have achieved or not.

What is the test to assess your satisfaction with life (SWLS)?

This test consists of 5 items (questions) that the person must answer based on a likert scale, that is, 5 types of response ranging from “strongly disagree, agree, neutral, agree, to strongly agree”. As we can see, the test to assess your satisfaction with life (SWLS) is one of the shortest, but this by no means means that it is easy to perform.

Somehow, when faced with those questions that Ed Diener, Robert A. Emmons, Randy J. Larsen, and Sharon Griffin first posed to us in 1985 through the Journal of Personality Assessment, it  forces us to reflect on very deep aspects of our life. life. Being honest is the most important thing in this instrument. Only then will we be clear about our starting point to continue working on our well-being, on that happiness that starts precisely from our own satisfaction with what we are and what we have achieved.

Test questions to assess our life satisfaction

As we have pointed out, this instrument is based on five very specific questions. They are as follows:

• 1. In most respects my life is how I want it to be.
• 2. The circumstances of my life are very good.
• 3. I am satisfied with my life.
• 4. So far I have gotten from life the things that I consider important
• 5. If I could live my life again I wouldn’t change a thing.

Is the test to assess your satisfaction with life (SWLS) reliable?

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) was not developed to evaluate aspects such as health, finances, affective relationships, etc. It is an instrument that measures very subjective realities represented in five items. It is possible that at first glance it generates certain doubts. Can you really know with this test if a person is satisfied with how their reality is in the present moment?

The answer is yes”. Studies, such as the one carried out by Dr. William Pavot, from the University of Minnesota, show us that we are facing a test with good validity compared to other scales that assess the same dimension. In addition, the SWLS allows assessing how satisfaction with the person’s life progresses during the course of a clinical intervention. We are, therefore, before a highly reliable, useful and very interesting resource in the psychological and research field.