Subjective well-being, life satisfaction, and quality of life describe how people evaluate and experience their lives as a whole and in specific domains. This domain focuses on the positive and evaluative side of psychological functioning: happiness, satisfaction, flourishing, positive experience, engagement, and perceived quality of life.
These measures assess global happiness, subjective well-being, and overall positive evaluation of life. They usually provide concise indicators of how happy or satisfied people feel when they reflect on their life as a whole.
The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ, OHI) assesses general happiness and psychological well-being, including positive affect, life satisfaction, and a sense of purpose.
The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) – a brief measure of a global subjective happiness as a broad evaluative construct.
The Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire assesses subjective happiness by combining a global rating of average happiness with estimates of the proportion of time spent feeling happy, unhappy, and neutral.
The Cantril Ladder is a single-item measure of life evaluation, asking individuals to rate their life on a ladder from the worst possible life to the best possible life.
Life satisfaction represents the cognitive component of well-being: a reflective evaluation of one's life as a whole or of major life periods and domains. Unlike momentary mood, it reflects a more stable judgment about how well life meets personal expectations and standards.
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is one of the most widely used instruments in this domain. It assesses global judgments of life satisfaction rather than momentary emotional states.
The Life Satisfaction Index (LSI) is an earlier measure of life satisfaction, particularly used in research on aging. It focuses on general contentment, purpose, and perceived success in life.
The Life Satisfaction Index for the Third Age (LSITA-SF) assesses life satisfaction and successful aging in older adults.
These instruments assess broader well-being and positive functioning rather than happiness or satisfaction alone. They may include emotional balance, psychological resources, social functioning, fulfillment, thriving, mental health, and satisfaction of basic or broader human needs.
The WHO Well-Being Index (WHO-5) is a short and widely used measure assessing positive mood, vitality, and general interest in life. Its brevity makes it suitable for large-scale studies and clinical screening.
The BBC Subjective Well-Being Scale (BBC-SWB) assesses subjective well-being across psychological, physical health, and relationships domains.
The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) assesses positive mental well-being, including positive affect, satisfying relationships, and psychological functioning.
The Flourishing Scale (FS) assesses perceived success in important areas of life, including relationships, meaning, competence, and optimism.
The PERMA Profiler assesses well-being across positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.
The Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (CIT, BIT) assess psychological well-being across domains such as relationships, engagement, mastery, meaning, optimism, and subjective well-being.
The Well-Being Manifestation Measure Scale assesses multidimensional psychological well-being, including self-esteem, balance, social engagement, sociability, and perceived control.
The Mental Health Continuum (MHC-SF) assesses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, providing a broader indicator of positive mental health.
The Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI) assesses subjective psychological well-being, emotional distress, vitality, self-control, and general perceptions of mental health.
These measures assess subjective well-being, flourishing, positive functioning, and life satisfaction in children and adolescents. They use age-appropriate language and often include domains such as school, family, peers, emotional experience, engagement, competence, and positive development.
The EPOCH Measure of Adolescent Well-Being assesses positive psychological functioning in adolescents across five domains: engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness.
These measures focus on positive experiences as they occur in activity and perception: flow, engagement, savoring, and responsiveness to beauty. They describe how people notice, maintain, deepen, and become absorbed in rewarding experiences.
The Leisure Attitude Scale (LAS) assesses cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes toward leisure and recreational activities.
The Flow Short Scale (FSS) assesses the experience of flow, including absorption in activity, perceived fluency of performance, and task-related engagement. It is relevant to well-being, motivation, learning, work, sport, and leisure contexts.
The Savoring Beliefs Inventory (SBI) assesses beliefs about one's ability to notice, intensify, and prolong positive experiences. It distinguishes savoring through anticipation, present-moment enjoyment, and reminiscence, linking positive affect with perceived control over positive emotional experience.
The Engagement with Beauty Scale (EBS 2.0) assesses engagement with beauty in nature, art, and moral experience.
Quality of life measures extend beyond subjective happiness to include broader evaluations of functioning, health, satisfaction, living conditions, and everyday life circumstances. They are especially useful in clinical, health-related, and applied research contexts.
The World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL) instruments assess multiple domains, including physical health, psychological well-being, social relationships, and environmental conditions.
The Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI) assesses life satisfaction across important life domains by combining the perceived importance of each domain with satisfaction in that area.
The Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire (Q-LES-Q) assesses enjoyment and satisfaction in daily functioning across domains such as physical health, mood, work, leisure, social relationships, and general activities.
The Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI-A) assesses subjective well-being across key life domains, such as standard of living, health, achievement, relationships, safety, community, and future security.
These measures assess subjective safety, psychological security, and satisfaction of the need for protection and stability. They describe how safe, protected, supported, or vulnerable a person feels in relation to their life conditions, social environment, and basic needs.
The Urban Residents Psychological Security Scale (URPS) assesses psychological security in urban life, including self-related security, social environmental security, and natural environmental security.
The Neuroception of Psychological Safety Scale (NPSS) assesses perceived safety through social, emotional, and bodily sensations. It includes dimensions related to social engagement, compassion, and physiological feelings of safety.
⇒ Existential well-being. Life satisfaction is close to meaning and fulfillment, but existential well-being concerns deeper questions of purpose, authenticity, personal growth, and life integration.
⇒ Self-Determination Theory. Many aspects of well-being depend on autonomy, intrinsic motivation, and satisfaction of basic psychological needs, which are developed in detail within this framework.
⇒ Goals and Motivation. Values, goals, aspirations, future orientation, and personal projects often shape how people evaluate their lives and what they consider a satisfying life.
⇒ Affect. Subjective well-being includes an affective component, but mood measures focus more directly on positive and negative emotional states.
Well-being and life satisfaction should be interpreted as multidimensional constructs. Some measures emphasize happiness and positive affect, others focus on reflective life evaluation, broader flourishing, quality of life, or well-being in specific contexts.
High well-being may reflect pleasant emotions, satisfaction with life, effective functioning, supportive environments, meaningful activity, or the fulfillment of important needs. Low scores may point to dissatisfaction, reduced positive experience, poor functioning, difficult living conditions, or lack of resources, but they do not by themselves indicate a clinical disorder.
Assessment in this domain is most useful when different layers of well-being are considered together: how people feel, how they evaluate their lives, how they function, and how their environments support or limit everyday quality of life.