Preliminary Validation of the Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS)

Two studies investigated the psychometric properties of the Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS: Huebner, 1994). In Study 1, 221 middle school students completed the Brief Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS), Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfaction Scale, Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS: Huebner, 1991a), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Children's Version (Laurent et al., 1999), Children's Social Desirability Scale (Crandall et al., 1965), and a one-item global life satisfaction rating (GLLS). Students also rated the importance of the BMSLSS five life satisfaction domains (Family, Friends, School, Self, Living Environment). The results revealed acceptable internal consistency reliability, criterion-related validity, and construct validity for the BMSLSS Total score for research purposes. Furthermore, evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the BMSLSS domain scores was also obtained through multitrait-multimethod analyses. Finally, the results failed to provide strong support for the usefulness of importance scores in predicting overall life satisfaction; unweighted BMSLSS scores were highly related to global life satisfaction (GLLS) scores. In Study 2, 46 high school students completed the BMSLSS and MSLSS to test the generalizability of the convergent and discriminant validity findings with older adolescents. The findings revealed stronger evidence of validity with this age group. Overall, the findings offered preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the BMSLSS, suggesting that it can serve as a useful alternative to the longer MSLSS in studies with adolescents in which brevity is an important consideration.