Hinz Andreas, Mehnert-Theuerkauf Anja, Glaesmer Heide, Schroeter Matthias L, Tibubos Ana N, Petrowski Katja, Friedrich Michael
Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 13;20(1):e0316990. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0316990. eCollection 2025.
Satisfaction 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.
A 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.
Over 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.
The 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.
生活满意度是大多数人关注的一个关键概念。用于测量总体生活满意度的生活满意度量表（SWLS）已在横断面关联方面得到广泛分析。然而，关于生活满意度的长期变化以及这些变化与其他身心健康变量变化之间的关联的了解有限。
以社区为基础，选取具有代表性的普通人群样本，使用SWLS和其他几个量表，在六年的时间间隔内进行了两次检查（n = 4999）。
在这六年中，总样本的SWLS平均得分几乎保持不变（t1和t2时均为M = 27.0，SD = 5.2）。总样本的重测信度为rtt = 0.66，男性和女性受访者在时间稳定性上仅有微小差异。六年中SWLS的变化与乐观度变化（r = 0.23）、心理健康（r = 0.26）、社会功能（r = 0.22）、感知社会支持（r = 0.21）、焦虑（r = -0.30）和身体不适（r = -0.18）相关。这些变化得分的相关性低于横断面视角下的相应系数。建立了跨性别、年龄和时间的测量不变性。
SWLS被证明是评估生活满意度变化的合适工具，生活满意度变化得分与健康相关变量之间的相关性从横断面视角补充了关于这些关联的知识。
