ArticlePloS one2025
Changes in life satisfaction over six years in the general population: A longitudinal study with the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS).
Article in PloS one, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Age Patterns in Dual-Cycle Identity Processes and Their Associations With Life Satisfaction.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Associations Between Life Satisfaction and Sleep Quality Among Older Adults in China: Mediating Roles of Psychological Resilience and Anxiety and a Moderating Role of Chronic Disease.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Psychiatric health of Icelandic adults 40 years or older: A nationwide study of diagnoses, medications, and symptoms.PloS one · 2026Article
- Factorial Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) in Mexican and Colombian University Students.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Predictors of Filipino Life Satisfaction Using the Revised Filipino Satisfaction With Life Scale.Nursing researchArticle
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSatisfaction with life is a key concept for most individuals. The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) for measuring general life satisfaction has been widely analyzed in terms of cross-sectional associations. However, the knowledge about long-term changes in life satisfaction and the associations between such changes and changes in other variables of physical and mental health is limited.
methodsA community-based representative sample of the general population has been examined twice with a time interval of six years (n = 4,999), using the SWLS and several other scales.
resultsOver the six years, the mean SWLS score of the total sample remained nearly unchanged (M = 27.0, SD = 5.2, both at t1 and at t2). The test-retest correlation was rtt = 0.66 for the total sample, and there were only marginal differences in temporal stability between male and female respondents. Changes in the SWLS over the six years were correlated with changes in optimism (r = 0.23), mental health (r = 0.26), social functioning (r = 0.22), perceived social support (r = 0.21), anxiety (r = -0.30), and physical complaints (r = -0.18). These change score correlations were lower than the corresponding coefficients under the cross-sectional perspective. Measurement invariance across sex, age, and time was established.
conclusionThe SWLS proved to be an appropriate tool for assessing changes in life satisfaction, and correlations between change scores of life satisfaction and health-related variables complement the knowledge about these associations from a cross-sectional perspective.
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