Measures of Well-Being: An Empirical and Critical Assessment

Three frequently used measures of well-being-the Life Satisfaction scale, the Social Isolation scale and the Willingness to Live scale are evaluated in terms of their empirical similarity. The internal consistency of the social isolation items, it isfound, does not exceed the cross-correlation between the social isolation and life satisfaction items. A group factor analysis confirms the existence of considerable communality among the items of the two scales, suggesting they are largely redundant. The implications of this redundancyfor health-related and gerontological studies are discussed.