The Subjective Happiness Scale

Professor Sonya Lyubomirsky from the University of California, Riverside has created the Subjective Happiness Scale[1], which you can download here, or from her website here.

INSTRUCTIONS

For each of the following statements and/or questions, circle the point on the scale that you feel is most appropriate in describing you.

To score the scale, reverse code the 4th item (i.e., turn a 7 into a 1, a 6 into a 2, a 5 into a 3, a 3 into a 5, a 2 into a 6, and a 1 into a 7), and compute the mean of the 4 items.  Norms are available in the reference below, as well as in many other publications that have used the scale (see PsycInfo).

STEP 1: Total = Item 1:___ + Item 2: ___ + Item 3:___+ Item 4:___ = ______

STEP 2: Happiness score = Total (from above)____ divided by 4 = ____

[1] Lyubomirsky, S., & Lepper, H. S. (1999). A measure of subjective happiness: Preliminary reliability and construct validation. Social Indicators Research, 46(2), 137–155. http://sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/themes/sonjalyubomirsky/papers/LL1999.pdf