Confirming and expanding the usefulness of the extended satisfaction with life scale (ESWLS)

The findings provide strong evidence to support the Extended Satisfaction with Life Scale (ESWLS) as a valuable research technique for the study of subjective quality of life. Alfonso et al. (1996) developed the ESWLS applying research of leading scholars who have focused on improving the measurement of quality of life over the past 30 years. Factor analysis and psychometric tests were applied to document the excellent properties of the ESWLS as a survey instrument. The current research proposes important modifications of the ESWLS that extend its value for survey studies of diverse populations. The major modifications include: adding survey items to measure income, health, and safety domains which have been demonstrated to be important components of life quality (Cummins, 1996); reducing the number of survey items for each quality of life domain from five to two, thus decreasing the number of items on the revised ESWLS to 22 from the original 50; and, reducing the seven-point Likert scale to five points. The last two changes were made to reduce response time and respondent fatigue in completing the self-report survey instrument. Respondents included low income welfare clients and recently dislocated workers (n = 151); and, adult, part-time students in social work and counseling programs (n = 101). Orthogonal and oblique solutions for the modified ESWLS delineate very comparable, stable factor structures using responses from diverse populations. Using the additional, rescaled survey items, these findings provide strong support for the ESWLS in its simplified and expanded formats. This application of the original and expanded versions of the ESWLS finds the expanded version adds to the strength and usefulness of the instrument for the measurement of quality of life in a broader range of circumstances.