Children's Reports of Their Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Two studies investigated the properties of a children's subjective well-being measure, the Student's Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS), with middle school students. The first study explored convergent and discriminant validity utilizing multitrait-multimethod analyses. The second study investigated the temporal stability of children's life satisfaction reports over a 4-week period and the comparability of their reports across frequency and extent response formats. Children's life satisfaction reports correlated significantly with parents' ratings, providing evidence of convergent validity. Discriminant validity was also demonstrated. Moderate temporal stability was shown. However, scores across the different response formats were not interchangeable and revealed different correlates. The latter findings suggested that different response formats may tap different psychological constructs.