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SODA: a new questionnaire for the assessment of life satisfaction in late life span

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Abstract

Background

Established measures of well-being rarely examine active lifestyle or religious behaviors. Though these could be assessed using individual measures, in older populations, the availability of a brief composite instrument with adequate psychometric properties would be desirable.

Aims

Two studies were conducted to assess the psychometric properties (i.e., item adequacy, factorial structure, reliability and validity) of a new tool that was developed to self-rate personal satisfaction among Italian elders, the SODdisfazione dell’Anziano (SODA) Questionnaire.

Methods

135 young adults (mean age = 29.5 years, SD = 7.4) took part in Study 1, whereas Study 2 was carried out with 474 cognitively healthy 60–98-year-old people, that were asked to complete a battery of well-known well-being measures including the SODA one.

Results

Study 1 showed that the SODA questionnaire is a reliable and valid self-report tool defined by three factors, assessing satisfaction about physical and cognitive health, religious well-being, and satisfaction about time spent for leisure activities, respectively. Study 2 replicated the outcomes of Study 1, highlighting the factor structure of the SODA inventory. Moreover, a series of stepwise linear regression analyses pointed out what factors (i.e., education, physical health, social desirability, participation to outdoor leisure activities, gender, and age) predicted the variance relative to the SODA indexes.

Discussion

Current findings show the solid psychometric properties of SODA.

Conclusions

SODA represents a brief, but reliable and valid, instrument for the assessment of satisfaction (focused on the state level) in late adult span.

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Funding

This work was partially supported by the Sardinia Regional Government under Grant no. “CRP-78543”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Via Is Mirrionis 1, 09123, Cagliari, Italy

    Maria Chiara Fastame & Maria Pietronilla Penna

  2. Department of Surgery, Medical, Molecular, and Critical Area Pathology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Paul Kenneth Hitchcott

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  1. Maria Chiara Fastame
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  2. Maria Pietronilla Penna
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Correspondence to Maria Chiara Fastame.

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The study was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments.

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Appendices

Appendix A: SODA Questionnaire (Italian version)

Le chiediamo di valutare quanto si può ritenere soddisfatto nell’ultima settimana relativamente a diversi aspetti che caratterizzano la vita quotidiana di ognuno di noi. Per ogni dimensione considerata, Le chiediamo di indicare su una scala che va da 0 a 10 il Suo livello di soddisfazione, si ricordi che 0 vuol dire NON essere soddisfatti per niente e 10 invece vuol dire essere totalmente soddisfatti. Non esistono risposte giuste o sbagliate, ciascuno di noi valuta ciascun aspetto della vita considerato in modo diverso, secondo la propria esperienza.

figure a
figure b

Appendix B: SODA Questionnaire (English version)

Please rate how satisfied you are about different aspects of daily life during the last week. For each dimension, please indicate on a scale from 0 to 10 your level of satisfaction, remember that 0 means NOT being satisfied at all, whereas 10 means completely satisfied. There are no right or wrong answers, everybody assesses each aspect of his/her own life in a different way, according to his/her experience.

figure c
figure d

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Fastame, M.C., Penna, M.P. & Hitchcott, P.K. SODA: a new questionnaire for the assessment of life satisfaction in late life span. Aging Clin Exp Res 32, 515–533 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-019-01211-9

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