Dear Kanu,
The Satisfaction with Life Scale or SWLS (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) is a widely used global satisfaction measure. It consists of the following items that are rated on a 7-point scale from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (7). The items are:
1. “In most ways my life is close to my ideal.”
2. “The conditions of my life are excellent.”
3. “I am satisfied with my life.”
4. “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.”
5. “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.”
Though the SWLS is a good start, I would suggest that you also read up on the Experience Sampling or ESM method (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), the Ecological Momentary Assessment or EMA method (Stone & Shiffman, 1994) and Danny Kahneman’s Daily Reconstruction Method or DRM (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). Lastly, given the recent trends toward including physiological measures in our studies, I would suggest you investigate the correlation between cortisol and subjective well being. However, if you want to stick to traditional ways of measuring SWB, you may want to read Lucas, Diener & Suh’s (1996) piece on the discriminant validity of various SWB scales and Kahneman & Kruger’s (2004) piece on the developments in measurement of SWB in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Here are the references to the works I’ve cited above:
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins.
Diener, E., Emmons, R.A., Larsen, R. J., Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 1.
Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwarz, N., & Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: The day reconstruction method. Science, 306, 1776–780.
Lucas, R., Diener, E., & Suh, E. M. (1996). Discriminant validity of well-being measures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 616–28.
Pavot, W., Diener, E., Colvin, C. R., & Sandvik, E. (1991). Further validation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale: Evidence for the cross-method convergence of well-being measures. Journal of Personality Assessment 49, 71–75.
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983.). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-
being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513–23.
Stone, A., & Shiffman, S. (1994). Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) in behavioral medicine. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 16, 199–202.
Good luck with you research,
Sreedhari
Sreedhari D. Desai
Graduate Research Fellow
Program on Negotiation
Harvard Law School
1563 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02143
Ph: (617) 495 7705
&
Ph.D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior
Department of Management
David Eccles School of Business
University of Utah
________________________________________
From: Organizational Behavior Division Listserv [
OB@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Kanu Priya [
kpriya@UGA.EDU]
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2010 3:37 PM
To:
OB@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: [OB-LIST] measure for subjective Well being
Hello all
I am a final year PhD student and for my dissertation I am looking to measure subjective well being. I have so far been unable to find a good self report measure of subjective well being. Can anyone help me?
Kanu
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Kanu Priya, M.A., M.S.
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Management
Terry College of Business
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
G-9 Brooks Hall
Ph: 706-542-6194
Fax: 706-542-3743
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