Validating the temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale in the Spanish elderly: a bifactor model application

The purpose of this research is to disentangle how much of life satisfaction is due to its stable dimension and how much is due to temporal dimensions on a Spanish elderly sample, studying the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale’s (TSLS) factorial structure. It is a panel design of 737 people attending the University of Valencia available programs for long life learning (response rate 77.54%). Good levels of internal consistency of the scale were found, alpha for the TSLS was .91, and .83, .81 and .86 for the subscales. Criterion-related and nomological validity evidence was adequate too. Confirmatory models showed that a bifactor (one general dimension of life satisfaction and three domain specific factors of past, present and future satisfaction) structure represented the data more appropriately. TSLS incorporates the time axis measurement with psychometric guarantees, as shown in this first validation of the Spanish version with elderly population.