Subjective Well-Being Measures Tested with 12-Year-Olds in Israel

Research points to a need to further test subjective well-being (SWB) measures with children, examining their applicability in different languages and cultural contexts. This study begins to fill this gap by presenting a comparative analysis of SWB measures among a large sample of 12-year-old Arab and Israeli children (N = 1081). It tests five SWB measures: overall life satisfaction (OLS); happiness in the last two weeks (HLTW); Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS); Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS); and Personal Well-Being Index (PWI-SC). The results show that the children in this sample score relatively highly in terms of SWB. Although demographics are usually only weakly correlated with SWB, the results here reveal some significant differences by gender, family type, location (rural/urban), and parent’s employment status. Two shorter versions of the SLSS and the PWI-SC show good reliability and good fit at SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) in their ability to predict the global one-item measures (OLS and HLTW). The BMSLSS also showed good fit in models with the OLS and HLTW, but its reliability, while still acceptable, should be further examined for use in Israel.