Unidimensionality of Life Satisfaction and its Relation to Social Desirability: A Confirmatory Study of a Short Form of the Life Satisfaction Scale

Abstract

This study investigated construct validity of a short version of the Life Satisfaction in the Elderly Scale developed from an exploratory factor analysis in 1990 of the original version of Salamon and Conte's Life Satisfacion scale. First, a confirmatory factor analysis (maximum likelihood method) was conducted on 149 adult and elderly Italians to assess whether the latent variable of the Life Satisfaction Short Form scale was adequately represented by one factor. Analysis showed a good fit for the proposed unidimensional model, the items achieved good internal consistency on the scale, and no age differences arose in the score for the Life Satisfacion factor. Second, the correlations between the items measuring Life Satisfaction and the Eysenck 1985 Lie scale indicated that the items on the Life Satisfaction Short Form are largely independent of social desirability for younger and older adults.