The Satisfaction With Life Scale in Educational Settings:A Narrative Review of Psychometric Evidence and Implications for Student and Teacher Well-Being (1985–2025)

Life satisfaction is relevant to educational research because it has been associated with students’ engagement, academic self-efficacy, stress, and broader educational functioning. However, the use of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) in schools and universities requires evidence that its scores are reliable and comparable across developmental, cultural, and educational groups. This structured narrative review synthesized evidence on the internal structure, reliability, measurement invariance, and educational interpretability of the SWLS, primarily in adolescent and university samples, alongside the limited available evidence from teachers. Searches were conducted in Scopus and PubMed, using combinations of SWLS, psychometric, student, school, university, teacher, reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. After screening, 13 studies met the eligibility criteria. Evidence from adolescent and university samples generally supported a one-factor structure and adequate internal consistency, although alternative factorial representations and incomplete scalar invariance across countries or languages indicate that measurement equivalence should not be assumed. Teacher-specific psychometric evidence was limited to one South African study involving 355 primary and secondary schoolteachers, which supported reliability and unidimensionality but did not establish generalizability across teacher populations. The SWLS may contribute to research and low-stakes monitoring of global life satisfaction, provided that its measurement properties are supported in the target population. It should not be interpreted as a diagnostic instrument or as a direct measure of school satisfaction, teaching quality, or academic performance.