The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS): appraisal with 1700 healthy young adults in The Netherlands

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) was developed in the U.S.A. to represent a multi-item scale for the overall assessment of life satisfaction as a cognitive-judgemental process, rather than for the measurement of specific satisfaction domains (e.g. health, material wealth). The present study was a further attempt to extend the applicability of the SWLS in a different cultural context (The Netherlands) using a large sample of healthy young adults. In line with previous American and Dutch findings, figures on the internal structure of the SWLS were quite favourable. SWLS scores were also shown to be predictably associated with marital status, indices of general health, self-esteem, euphoria, dysphoria (−) and neuroticism (−). A high number of visits to the GP correlated significantly negatively with SWLS in males only. As anticipated, associations of the SWLS with biological sex, impulsivity, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility were negligibly low. The frequently reported substantial positive correlation with sociability was not confirmed. Instead, significant but small correlations were observed, the yield of which was discussed in the context of findings showing that there are other aspects of extraversion that are more strongly related to satisfaction with life than sociability. These other aspects include assertiveness in males and positive emotion in females.