Abstract
A number of subjective well-being scales were compared and evaluated. The Satisfaction With Life Scale emerged as a good measure of general life satisfaction and the Affective Intensity Measure appeared to adequately assess the characteristic level of emotional intensity. Most other scales seemed to reflect both life satisfaction and duration of positive versus negative affect. Of the single item measures, those created by Fordyce were the strongest, whereas for the multi-item scales, several performed at adequate levels. The widely used Bradburn scales showed several undesirable psychometric properties and alternative scales are suggested.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Andrews, F. M., and S. Withey: 1965, Social Indicators of Well-Being (Plenum, New York).
Bradburn, N. M., and D. Caplovitz: 1965, Reports on Happiness (Aldine, Chicago).
Buss, A. H., and R. Plomin: 1975, A Temperament Theory of Personality Development (Wiley, New York).
Campbell, A., P. E. Converse, and W. L. Rodgers: 1976, The Quality of American Life (Russell Sage, New York).
Cantril, H.: 1965, The Patterns of Human Concern (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J.).
Conte, V. C. and M. J. Salamon: 1982, ‘An objective approach to the measurement and use of life satisfaction with older persons’ Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance 15, pp. 194–200.
Crowne, D., and D. Marlowe: 1964, The Approval Motive (Wiley, New York).
Derogatis, L. R., R. S. Lipman, J. Rickels, E. H. Uhlenhuth, and L. Covi: 1974, The Hopkins symptom checklist: A measure of primary symptom dimensions, in P. Pichot (Ed.), Psychological Measurements in Psychopharmacology: Modern Problems in Pharmopsychiatry (S. Krager, Basel).
Diener, E.: 1984, ‘Subjective well-being’, Psychological Bulletin 95, pp. 542–575.
Diener, E. and R. A. Emmons: 1984, ‘The independence of positive and negative affect’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47, pp. 1105–1117.
Diener, E. and R. J. Larsen: 1984, ‘Temporal stability and cross-situational consistency of affective, behavioural, and cognitive responses’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47, pp. 871–883.
Diener, E., R. J. Larsen, S. Levine and R. A. Emmons: ‘Frequency and intensity: The underlying dimensions of positive and negative affect’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, in press.
Diener, E., R. A. Emmons, R. J. Larsen, and S. Griffin: ‘The satisfaction with life scale: A measure of life satisfaction’, Journal of Personality Assessment, in press.
Eysenck, H. J., and S. B. G. Eysenck: 1968, Manual for the Eysenck Personality Inventory (Educational and Industrial Testing Service, San Diego).
Fordyce, M. W.: 1978, Prospectus: The Self-Description Inventory (Unpublished manuscript, Edison Community College, Fort Myers, Florida).
George, L. K., and L. B. Bearon: 1980, Quality of Life in Older Persons: Meaning and Measurement (Human Sciences Press, New York).
Gurin, G., J. Veroff, and S. Feld: 1960, American's View of Their Mental Health (Basic, New York).
Kammann, R. and R. Flett: 1963, ‘Affectometer 2: A scale to measure current level of general happiness’, Australian Journal of Psychology 35, pp. 257–263. (a)
Kammann, R., and R. Flett: 1983, Sourcebook for Measuring Well-Being with Affectometer 2 (Why Not? Foundation, Dunedin, New Zealand).
Kirkaldy, B. D.: 1984: ‘The interrelationship between state and trait variables’, Personality and Individual Differences 5, pp. 141–149.
Kozma, A. and M. J. Stones: 1980, ‘The measurement of happiness: Development of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness (MUNSCH)’, Journal of Gerontology 35, pp. 906–912.
Larsen, R. J.: 1983, Manual for the Affect Intensity Measure (Unpublished manuscript, Purdue University).
Larsen, R. J.: 1984, Theory and Measurement of Affect Intensity as an Individual Difference Characteristic (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
Larson, R.: 1978, ‘Thirty years of research on the subjective well-being of older Americans’, Journal of Gerontology 33, pp. 109–125.
Lohmann, N. L. P.: 1977, ‘Comparison on life satisfaction, morale and adjustment scales on an elderly population’, (Doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 1977), Dissertation Abstracts International 38, p. 418B. (University Microfilms No. 77-15, 272).
Rosenberg, M.: 1965, Society and the Adolescent Self-Image (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.).
Schwarz, N. and G. L. Clore: 1983, ‘Mood, misattribution, and judgments of wellbeing: Informative and directive functions of affective states’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, pp. 513–523.
Tellegen, A.: 1979, Differential Personality Questionnaire (Unpublished materials, University of Minnesota).
Underwood, B. and W. J. Froming: 1980, ‘The mood survey: A personality measure of happy and sad moods’, Journal of Personality Assessment 44, pp. 404–414.
Weinstein, L.: 1982, ‘Positive contrast as due to happiness’, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 19, pp. 97–98.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Larsen, R.J., Diener, E. & Emmons, R.A. An evaluation of subjective well-being measures. Social Indicators Research 17, 1–17 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00354108
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00354108