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...are offered.
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Social relationships, and particularly love relationships, are at the core of human life. The question of what constitutes love has been addressed by poets, novelists, philosophers, theologians and, of course, professional counselors (J. Myers Shurts, 2002). In every part of the world, love is considered one of the most important feelings that human beings experience, and being in love leaves an indelible social and psychological mark. The domain of love constitutes one of the most important sectors of our society. For instance, Salvatore and Munoz Sastre (2001) found that love life was the main predictor of well-being. Love is essential to mental health. Freud (1924) argued that "A strong ego is protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, and we must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love" (p. 42). Similarly, Sternberg and Grajek (1984) noted that
Love can be among the most intense of human emotions, and is certainly one of the most sought after. People have been known to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill in its name, yet no one knows quite what it is. (p. 312)
Thus, as J. Myers and Shurts (2002) pointed out,
[I]t may be quite valuable for counselors to assess, in some manner, the nature and meaning of love as a basis for working with individuals, couples, and families. Assessing love requires the selection of suitable measures, clinical methods, or both. (p. 239)
The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument that can be used to evaluate satisfaction with love life.
SATISFACTION WITH LIFE
Subjective well-being is a growing area of psychology that focuses on how people evaluate their lives. The study of subjective well-being is of great practical importance. Diener (1996) argued that
when policy makers seek to understand how to improve the quality of life, measures of subjective well-being are necessary to complement more objective measures such as economic indices. Indeed, measures of happiness and life satisfaction are now collected in highly industrialized nations to monitor the well- being of these societies. If only social indicators are considered (e.g., per capita income and crime rates), valuable information is lost about how people weigh and react to their life circumstances. (p. 319)
Attempts to define subjective well-being have been made by several authors. Differences in definitions appear to depend on the field of study in which subjective well-being has been investigated (Diener, 2000). The three most popular fields of study have been mental health (e.g., Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960), quality of life (e.g., Andrews & Withey, 1976), and social gerontology (e.g., Lawton, 1983). Although no one phrase can capture the complexity and scope of subjective well-being, it is usually broadly defined as a subjective summation of the quality of an individual's life by that person (Andrews & Robinson, 1991). In other words, no one but the individual himself or herself can know what it is like to be in that person's skin (D. G. Myers & Diener, 1995).
Most researchers agree that there are three specific components of subjective well-being that can be operationalized and measured. Two of these components are within the affective domain, and the other is in the cognitive domain (Andrews & Robinson, 1991; Diener, 2000; D. G. Myers & Diener, 1995; Pavot & Diener, 1993). The affective components include the presence of positive affect such as happiness or good feelings and the absence of negative affect. Negative affect refers to unpleasant feelings such as anxiety and anger (Argyle, 2001). The cognitive component has been conceptualized as the intellectual evaluation of one's life satisfaction, either globally or with respect to specific life domains. As discussed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin (1985), life satisfaction stems from a judgmental process by the individual.
Considering the life satisfaction component separately from the affective components, Diener et al. (1985) developed the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) to measure global life satisfaction, or satisfaction with one's life as a whole rather than with specific life domains. This scale has been widely used because of its brevity as well as its reliability and validity evidence. Pavot and Diener (1993) have provided normative data for the scale scores, which have shown good convergent validity with scores from other scales and with other types of assessment of subjective well-being. Scores from the SWLS showed a degree of internal consistency (coefficient alpha of .87) and of temporal stability (e.g., r = .54 for 4 years), yet the SWLS has shown sufficient sensitivity to be potentially valuable to detect change in life satisfaction during the course of clinical intervention. Furthermore, the scale scores showed discriminant validity in discriminating satisfaction with life from emotional well-being. For example, Lucas, Diener, and Suh (1996) demonstrated that life satisfaction is discriminable from positive and negative affect and from optimism and self-esteem. For this reason, researchers might wish to examine the affective and the life satisfaction components of subjective well-being separately. Although there are other life satisfaction scales that measure global life satisfaction, many are confounded with items that also measure some aspects of the affective component of subjective well-being or are specific to a particular population.
In a previous investigation, Neto (1993b) examined whether specific psychometric findings reported by Diener et al. (1985) could be generalized to a group of participants differing in at least two important aspects--(a) cultural/national background and (b) age--by examining Portuguese adolescents. This study reinforced the viewpoint of Diener et al. (1985) that the SWLS can be used with different age groups, and in this particular case with adolescents. Moreover, it supported the cross-national validity of the SWLS scores. In another investigation, Neto (1995) focused on psychological correlates of life satisfaction among young Portuguese living in France, the country that has received the greatest number of Portuguese migrants during the last 3 decades. The results of this study replicated earlier findings and demonstrated some of the wide network of background and psychosocial variables in which life satisfaction is embedded.
SATISFACTION WITH LOVE LIFE
The construct of love has...
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