The Contribution of Domain Satisfaction to Life Satisfaction: Convergent Validity of Importance Measures

Global life satisfaction is the evaluation of one’s life among important domains. Therefore, importance ratings should improve the relation between domain satisfaction and life satisfaction. However, this is not the case because studies have shown that importance ratings do not improve the model. This study examined the validity of importance and satisfaction measures using a multi-method approach. 316 participants were recruited in friendship pairs to fill out a series of questionnaires about themselves and their friend. Based on the self-informant agreement scores, there is some validity in importance and the satisfaction ratings. The importance measures for some domains also predicted people’s behavioural patterns. Indirect importance ratings were also extracted using regression and correlational analysis. In conclusion, there was also evidence for convergent validity of the direct and indirect importance measures. Therefore, people do think about the important domains to some extent when making a global life satisfaction judgment.MAS