Satisfaction with Life Scale

SWLS

psychologysocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.

A 5-item self-report instrument assessing global cognitive judgments of one's life satisfaction as a component of subjective well-being.

Items

Response format

7-point Likert scale

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Life satisfaction was measured using the 5-item Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985) on a 7-point Likert scale. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency in the original validation (α = .87).

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Reliability & validation

Notes

Test-retest reported over a 2-month interval.

Validation population

Undergraduate students

Test–retest

0.82

Cronbach's α

0.87

Response anchors

Strongly disagree · Disagree · Slightly disagree · Neither agree nor disagree · Slightly agree · Agree · Strongly agree

Known limitations

Measures global satisfaction judgments rather than affect or domain-specific satisfaction. Widely translated; researchers should cite validation work for the language version used.

Original citation

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71-75.

https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13

Questions researchers ask

What does the SWLS measure?

A 5-item self-report instrument assessing global cognitive judgments of one's life satisfaction as a component of subjective well-being.

How many items does the SWLS have?

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) has 5 items.

Is the SWLS free to use?

The SWLS is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the SWLS reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.87, test–retest reliability of 0.82. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the SWLS, and how do I cite it?

Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction with Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71-75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13

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Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.