HOW TO MEASURE HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING
Positive Psychology measures everything that affects our quality of life, health and longevity.
The most well-respected and established short measure used to assess subjective well-being
is called the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), which consists of five statements listed below.
As you read through them, you too can answer them and give a score to each based on the following exercise:
EXERCISE
Rate each statement from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree.
Scale: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
- In most ways my life is close to ideal
- The conditions of my life are excellent
- I am satisfied with my life
- So far I have got the important things I want in life
- If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing
Scoring & Interpretation
Add the numbers you scored for the five questions to get a total. Then, check your result below:
- 31 – 35 → Extremely Satisfied
- 26 – 30 → Satisfied
- 21 – 25 → Slightly Satisfied
- 20 → Neutral
- 15 – 19 → Slightly Dissatisfied
- 10 – 14 → Dissatisfied
- 5 – 9 → Extremely Dissatisfied
