Testing the factorial invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale across Chinese adolescents

We tested the factorial invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) across 2,178 rural, urban, and rural-to-urban Chinese adolescent students from middle schools and universities. We examined the psychometric properties of the SWLS and tested a 1-factor model with each of the rural, urban, and rural-to-urban groups. Multigroup analysis results revealed configural, weak, strong, and strict invariance of the SWLS across the groups, and also factorial invariance, factorial covariance, and latent mean invariance. The results showed that the SWLS had high internal consistency reliability and supported the single-factor structure. In addition, they showed that the gap in satisfaction with life between rural and urban populations in China may have diminished.