Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS)

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is a short questionnaire about how a person judges their life as a whole. Its five statements, such as feeling that one's life is close to ideal or that one is satisfied with life, are each rated on a 7-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. It was developed by Ed Diener, Robert Emmons, Randy Larsen and Sharon Griffin (1985).

It measures an overall judgement about life, not mood or symptoms. That makes it a useful counterpart to measures such as the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, which count problems.

The SWLS supports a baseline measurement and monitoring of life satisfaction. A therapist reads it with the person's history, mood, relationships, work and circumstances.

• Intake: a baseline of how the person sees their life.
• Treatment planning: see how far dissatisfaction reaches across life.
• Progress monitoring: repeat it and compare scores across sessions, watching for a rise.
• Alongside symptoms: use it with a symptom measure, because satisfaction can improve before symptoms fall.

The person reads five statements they may agree or disagree with and rates each from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). The scale asks them to be open and honest in their responses. It takes about a minute.

There is one total score, found in three steps.

1. Take the number the person chose for each of the five statements, from 1 to 7.
2. Add the five numbers. The total runs from 5 to 35. There is no reverse scoring.
3. Look the total up against the seven ranges, below.

Example: if the five answers are 5, 4, 6, 5 and 3, the total is 23, which falls in the slightly satisfied range.

Unlike the PHQ-9 and GAD-7, a higher SWLS score is better, so a rise over time is an improvement.

The total falls into one of seven published ranges.

A score of 20 is the neutral point of the scale. There is no single agreed threshold for a meaningful change when it is repeated, so read changes alongside what the person reports.

These ranges are guides, not diagnoses. A high score does not rule out difficulty in one area of life, and a low score is a reason for a closer conversation, not a conclusion.

No. None of its statements asks about suicide or self-harm, so a clinician needs to ask about risk directly, whatever the score is. Low life satisfaction often occurs with depression, and the PHQ-9 is commonly used alongside the SWLS for that reason.

If you or someone you know is in distress or at risk right now, please see our crisis support page.

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• It is a self-report measure, not a diagnosis. Low life satisfaction is not itself a mental health condition.
• It gives one global score, so it does not show which area of life is affecting satisfaction.
• Answers can be shaped by mood on the day, and by a wish to appear well.
• Cultural differences can affect how people judge and report satisfaction.
• It is not designed to measure distress or symptoms.

The WHO-5 measures recent wellbeing over 2 weeks, and the Rosenberg scale measures a person's sense of self-worth. The SWLS measures a judgement of life as a whole, with no time window. All three are scored so that a higher score is better.

Many therapists use one of them alongside a symptom measure, to track how a person sees their life as well as how they are feeling.

The SWLS has been used in many countries and languages. The original paper (Diener and colleagues, 1985) and a later review (Pavot and Diener, 1993) report good internal consistency and good stability over time. As with any range, how well it works depends on the group tested, so findings from one population should not be assumed to hold for another.