A cross-cultural evaluation of the students’ life satisfaction scale in chinese and american adolescents

Abstract

An increasing body of research has attended to the seemingly large differences in the levels of life satisfaction among young people across Eastern and Western cultures. However, little empirical evidence is available on the cultural equivalence of the life satisfaction measure, particularly among adolescents. We evaluated the measurement invariance of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS: Huebner 1991a, b) using American (N = 921) and Chinese samples (N = 963). Results from a series of multi-group confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a 5-item scale version possesses configural, full metric, and partial scalar invariance across two samples. In addition, no significant difference was found in latent mean scores after controlling for measurement invariance, suggesting Chinese and American adolescents reported equivalent levels of global life satisfaction as measured by the 5-item version SLSS. Recommendations for future research on cross-cultural evaluations of life satisfaction were provided.