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Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) has shown strong evidence of reliability, validity, and gender invariance, and there is some evidence of invariance across age, culture, and educational levels. So far, invariance across sexual orientation has not been studied, despite the number of works that...

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Autores principales: Checa, Irene, Di Marco, Donatella, Bohórquez, M. Rocío
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9363393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35588026
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02240-0
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author Checa, Irene
Di Marco, Donatella
Bohórquez, M. Rocío
author_facet Checa, Irene
Di Marco, Donatella
Bohórquez, M. Rocío
author_sort Checa, Irene
collection PubMed
description The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) has shown strong evidence of reliability, validity, and gender invariance, and there is some evidence of invariance across age, culture, and educational levels. So far, invariance across sexual orientation has not been studied, despite the number of works that relate well-being to sexual orientation. The SWLS should be invariant across sexual orientation to be able to compare group means. This study aimed to explore the invariance of the SWLS across sexual orientation. A non-probabilistic sample with 553 Spanish adults (208 males, 345 females; 212 heterosexuals, 182 gays, and 138 bisexuals among other sexual orientations) participated in a survey. We tested a one-factor model using confirmatory factor analysis. We tested the configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the factorial structure of the SWLS across sexual orientation with heterosexual, lesbian/gay, and bisexual groups. According to our results, the Spanish version of the SWLS shows scalar invariance across sexual orientations, allowing a valid comparison between sexual minority and heterosexual people. Moreover, in our sample, lesbian/gay and bisexual participants obtained lower scores in life satisfaction than heterosexual participants. Bisexual people obtained the lowest score in well-being compared with the other groups. Implications related to the importance of checking instrument invariance before comparing mean differences between groups are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-93633932022-08-11 Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation Checa, Irene Di Marco, Donatella Bohórquez, M. Rocío Arch Sex Behav Original Paper The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) has shown strong evidence of reliability, validity, and gender invariance, and there is some evidence of invariance across age, culture, and educational levels. So far, invariance across sexual orientation has not been studied, despite the number of works that relate well-being to sexual orientation. The SWLS should be invariant across sexual orientation to be able to compare group means. This study aimed to explore the invariance of the SWLS across sexual orientation. A non-probabilistic sample with 553 Spanish adults (208 males, 345 females; 212 heterosexuals, 182 gays, and 138 bisexuals among other sexual orientations) participated in a survey. We tested a one-factor model using confirmatory factor analysis. We tested the configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the factorial structure of the SWLS across sexual orientation with heterosexual, lesbian/gay, and bisexual groups. According to our results, the Spanish version of the SWLS shows scalar invariance across sexual orientations, allowing a valid comparison between sexual minority and heterosexual people. Moreover, in our sample, lesbian/gay and bisexual participants obtained lower scores in life satisfaction than heterosexual participants. Bisexual people obtained the lowest score in well-being compared with the other groups. Implications related to the importance of checking instrument invariance before comparing mean differences between groups are discussed. Springer US 2022-05-19 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9363393/ /pubmed/35588026 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02240-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Checa, Irene
Di Marco, Donatella
Bohórquez, M. Rocío
Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title_full Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title_fullStr Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title_full_unstemmed Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title_short Measurement Invariance of the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Sexual Orientation
title_sort measurement invariance of the satisfaction with life scale by sexual orientation
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9363393/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35588026
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02240-0
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