Concordance between life satisfaction and six elements ofwell-beingamong respondents to a health assessment survey, healthpartners employees, Minnesota, 2011

Abstract

Introduction We assessed and tracked perceptions ofwell-beingamong employees of member companies of HealthPartners, a nonprofit health care provider and health insurance company in Bloomington, Minnesota. The objective of our study was to determine the concordance between self-reported life satisfaction and a construct of subjectivewell-beingthat comprised 6 elements ofwellbeing: emotional and mental health, social and interpersonal status, financial status, career status, physical health, and community support. Methods We analyzed responses of 23,268 employees (of 37,982 invitees) from 6 HealthPartners companies who completed a health assessment in 2011. We compared respondents' answers to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life?" with their indicators of well-beingwhere "high life satisfaction" was defined as a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest) and "high level of well-being"was defined as a rating of 9 or 10 for 5 or 6 of the 6 indicators ofwell-being. Result We found a correlation betweenself-reportedlife satisfaction and the number of well-beingelements scored as high (9 or 10) (r = 0.62, P< .001); 73.6% of the respondents were concordant (high on both or high on neither). Although 82.9% of respondents with high overallwell-beingindicated high life satisfaction, only 34.7% of those indicating high life satisfaction reported high overallwellbeing. Conclusion The correlation between self-reported life satisfaction and our well-beingmeasure was strong, and members who met our criterion of high overallwell-beingwere likely to report high life satisfaction. However, many respondents who reported high life satisfaction did not meet our criterion for high overall well-being, which suggests that either they adapted to negative life circumstances or that our well-being measure did not identify their sources of life satisfaction.