Development of the Contentment with Life Assessment Scale (CLAS): Using Daily Life Experiences to Verify Levels of Self-Reported Life Satisfaction

Social Indicators Research (2007) 83:201244 Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s11205-006-9054-6

LORAINE F. LAVALLEE, P. MAURINE HATCH, ALEX C. MICHALOS and TARA MCKINLEY

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTENTMENT WITH LIFE

ASSESSMENT SCALE (CLAS): USING DAILY LIFE

EXPERIENCES TO VERIFY LEVELS OF SELF-REPORTED

LIFE SATISFACTION

(Accepted 21 August 2006)

ABSTRACT. On average, Anglo-Americans report that they are satised with their lives, but their global evaluations tend to deviate from their daily experiences (e.g., Oishi [2002, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(10), 13981406]). We explored the hypothesis that the average life satisfaction of Anglo-Americans is better characterized as neutral than satised. In Study 1 we developed the ve-item Contentment with Life Assessment Scale (CLAS), which focuses on contentment, fulllment and self-discrepancies. Normative data based on three general population samples demonstrated that the CLAS produces a close to normal distribution of scores, has excellent reliability, and is sensitive to dierences in life conditions (e.g., income, marital status). In two daily diary studies we tested whether global life satisfaction measures corresponded to peoples daily subjective well-being. The CLAS was the best predictor among three self-report life satisfaction measures of daily escapist behaviors including television watching and alcohol consumption, and daily stress-related physical symptoms (Study 2). In Study 3, participants recorded their level of life satisfaction daily for two weeks. Average daily life satisfaction scores clustered close to the neutral rather than satised point of the measurement scale.

KEY WORDS: life satisfaction, life satisfaction measurement, subjective well-being, contentment, daily diary methodology

1. INTRODUCTION

Cross-cultural comparisons indicate that people living in the industrialized West including most Western European countries, Australia, the United States, and Canada report the highest per capita life satisfaction (Diener et al., 1995; Myers, 2000). In Western nations self-report life satisfaction measures produce negatively skewed and somewhat narrow distributions of scores that cluster around the three-quarters, or satised, mark of the measurement scale (Cummins, 1995; Cummins and Nistico, 2002;

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Michalos, 2004). Although current self-report measures do a good job of distinguishing between relatively satised and relatively unsatised people within cultural groups (e.g., Pavot et al., 1991; Diener, 1994), very little research has attempted to validate absolute levels of self-reported life satisfaction. Recently Oishi (2002) has argued that cultural theories about life such as the Taoist...