Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS)
Five statements about your life as a whole, scored 5–35
The Satisfaction with Life Scale was developed by Ed Diener and colleagues in 1985 to measure the cognitive side of well-being: not how you feel today, but your own judgement of how your life is going, measured against your own standards rather than anyone else's. It has five statements, takes under a minute, and has been used in thousands of studies across ages, cultures and health conditions. Diener released it into the public domain.
For someone living with a post-viral condition it captures something the symptom scales do not. Illness can take a great deal from a life, and people vary enormously in how far it dents their overall satisfaction. Re-taking the SWLS every few months, next to the WHO-5 for recent mood, gives a sense of whether adaptation, treatment or changes in circumstance are moving the bigger picture.
Your SWLS score
Understanding your score
The five answers are added together. Diener's interpretation bands are: 31–35 extremely satisfied, 26–30 satisfied, 21–25 slightly satisfied, 20 neutral, 15–19 slightly dissatisfied, 10–14 dissatisfied, 5–9 extremely dissatisfied. Most people in Western general-population samples score between 21 and 30.
The scale is deliberately global. It does not ask about health, work or relationships separately, because people weight those areas differently. That also means a score does not tell you why you feel as you do; it tells you where you have landed. If you want to know what is pulling the number down, the fourth and fifth statements, about the things you want and what you would change, are usually the ones worth sitting with.
In a long illness the score can be low for entirely rational reasons: lost work, lost activities, an uncertain future. Some people nonetheless report satisfaction that surprises them, often after a period of adjustment, and the scale is sensitive enough to show that shift over months. A change of a few points is within normal fluctuation; a move across two bands is meaningful.
This is not a diagnosis. Low life satisfaction overlaps with, but is not the same as, depression. If you are struggling, tell your GP. If you ever feel unable to keep yourself safe, seek urgent help (in the UK: call 111 option 2, or 999 in an emergency).
Your results over time
Complete this again in a few weeks and the change will show here.
Symptom scores change slowly. A monthly retake is enough to see a trend.
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