Assessing the validity of single-item life satisfaction measures: results from three large samples

Abstract

Purpose-The present paper assessed the validity of single-item life satisfaction measures by comparing single-item measures to the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) -a more psychometrically established measure. Washington (N=13,064) and Oregon (N=2,277) recruited by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and a representative German sample (N=1,312) recruited by the Germany Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) were included in the present analyses. Single-item life satisfaction measures and the SWLS were correlated with theoretically relevant variables, such as demographics, subjective health, domain satisfaction, and affect. The correlations between the two life satisfaction measures and these variables were examined to assess the construct validity of single-item life satisfaction measures. Methods-Two large samples fromResults-Consistent across three samples, single-item life satisfaction measures demonstrated substantial degree of criterion validity with the SWLS (zero-order r = 0.62 -0.64; disattenuated r = 0.78 -0.80). Patterns of statistical significance for correlations with theoretically relevant variables were the same across single-item measures and the SWLS. Single-item measures did not produce systematically different correlations compared to the SWLS (average difference = 0.001 -0.005). The average absolute difference in the magnitudes of the correlations produced by singleitem measures and the SWLS were very small (average absolute difference = 0.015 −0.042).Conclusions-Single-item life satisfaction measures performed very similarly compared to the multiple-item SWLS. Social scientists would get virtually identical answer to substantive questions regardless of which measure they use.Keywords life satisfaction; single-item measure; Satisfaction with Life Scale; validity; measurement Subjective well-being is an overarching construct that captures the affective feelings and cognitive judgments people have about the quality of their lives. Life satisfaction is a component of subjective well-being that reflects the cognitive evaluation of whether one is happy with one's life. Understanding life satisfaction is important as it is associated with positive life outcomes, such as health [1] , and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) [10]. These studies measure many variables from thousands or even millions of respondents, so single-item measures are often used because participant burden is of primary concern. Given the increasing use of single-item life satisfaction measures both in research and policy settings, there is a pressing need to understand the psychometric properties of these measures. The goal of the current paper is to assess the psychometric properties of single-item life satisfaction measures with 3 separate samples totaling over 16,000 participants.When evaluating the psychometric properties of a measure, researchers are typically interested in two features: reliability and validity. With regard to reliability, conventional measures that rely on internal...

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