Are all Life Domains Created Equal? Domain Importance Weighting in Subjective Well-Being Research

While there are subjective well-being measures that incorporate the perceived importance of various life domains into the measurement conceptualization and construction, many researchers follow the approach of summing satisfaction ratings or scores of life domains to represent overall life satisfaction or subjective well-being (SWB). The equal-weight, equal-importance (of domain-specific satisfaction variables) assumption implied by the practice of summing satisfaction ratings to represent SWB was pointed out previously but has not been carefully examined. This paper assessed the plausibility of the equal-weight, equal-importance assumption by 1) comparing whether or not various life domains are perceived as of equal importance, and 2) examining whether or not all domain-specific satisfaction variables account for the variance in SWB to a similar degree. Findings of this study indicated that 1) all life domains were not perceived as equally important, and 2) a small number (subset) of domain-specific satisfaction variables accounted for a large portion of the variance in SWB. These findings call into question the plausibility of the equal-weight, equal-importance assumption.