Satisfaction with life in Serbia

Abstract

Satisfaction with life, one of the basic components of subjective wellbeing, is defined as a global self-evaluation of life quality according to subjective criteria, regardless of the specific personal values, standards or goals. The most commonly used scale for the assessment of this component of well-being is the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985). The scale, along with several other instruments, was administered to two samples of 505 and 942 respondents (52% and 50% females), of varying age (17 to 69 years) and social status. Comparably to the results based on the other, mainly Anglo-Saxon samples, the Serbian version of the scale proved to have good reliability and validity. The first principal component explains nearly 60% of the total variance and indicates one main source of individual differences in satisfaction with life. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis further support the conclusion that this scale has a simple, one-dimensional structure. In accordance with the expectations based on the nomological network of subjective well-being, the important correlates are economic status, extraversion, neuroticism, self-esteem and self-efficacy, while gender is not a significant correlate of life satisfaction. However, contrary to the findings of most previous research, additional significant correlates of this component of subjective well-being are educational status, agreeableness and affect intensity, while age is also significant, but depends on financial status. Comparision of the satisfaction with life measures obtained through the SWLS with the scores from 16 countries reported in the World Value Survey, shows that the samples from Serbia are, on average one standard deviation below the developed countries, but, at the same time, close to the majority of the neighboring countries.