Life satisfaction - what works?

We conducted two rapid reviews:

1. Life Satisfaction Intervention Review: Collating international evidence on activities, programmes or services intended to improve individual life satisfaction.
2. Life Satisfaction Determinants Review: Updating the evidence base using UK longitudinal data on broad factors that are associated with life satisfaction at a population-level.

Together, they provide a broad overview of the current evidence base on life satisfaction by offering a macro and micro view of what works to improve life satisfaction.

This briefing summarises the key insights from both and presents implications for research alongside recommendations for effective policy and practice.

Overall, we found:

• Strong evidence that emotional skill development, psychological therapies, exercise, and some emotion-based interventions work to improve life satisfaction.
• Strong evidence that education, employment, income, physical health, arts and culture have a well established association with life satisfaction.
• Evidence gaps in the interventions literature, including work-related interventions and interventions for specific population groups.
• Mixed or weaker evidence about the impact of community belonging and cohesion, environment, and travel on life satisfaction.

A priority next step is to connect these evidence bases together to expand intervention research into new areas, supported by the existing determinants research. We suggest prioritising the evaluation or trialling of interventions:

• in the workplace;
• being delivered to vulnerable groups;
• where there is currently insufficient evidence like music or social media interventions;
• that are linked to important determinants of life satisfaction like employment, education or close social relationships.

The reviews were conducted by Kohlrabi and were funded by the Cabinet Office Evaluation Task Force, the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, and the Department for Transport.

This project is part of our efforts to systematically identify and summarise the evidence that uses global wellbeing measures to understand what works to improve wellbeing.

Previously, we have explored the UK wellbeing evaluation literature that uses the ONS4 and Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) measures. Insights from the 2024 life satisfaction review are intended to be used alongside these.

Life satisfaction as a subjective wellbeing measure

Validated quantitative measures of life satisfaction are established and widely-used across different areas of research globally, meaning we have rich data.

Examples of measures include:

• The ‘ONS4’ single-item measure: “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?” with responses on a 0-10 scale where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’;
• The five-item Satisfaction With Life Scale: five questions using a 0-7 response scale that produces a single overall score out of 35.

They all provide a useful metric for researchers to investigate wellbeing and single-item scales in particular are increasingly used by economists to capture the monetary benefits of wellbeing impacts.

Our full research findings are presented in the technical report. Here we summarise key insights from each review.

Life Satisfaction intervention review – key findings

The research question for this review was:

What is the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving life satisfaction across the life-course?

The review identified a large international evidence base of high-quality studies.

Two-thirds of included interventions are emotion-based activities.

The efficacy of the interventions in improving life satisfaction is mixed, with some types appearing promising and others not providing statistically significant results.

Of the 234 interventions included approximately:

• 25% were focused on to university students
• 20% were focused on children or young people
• 20% were focused on adults over 50
• Just under half were conducted in Europe
• Almost 40% were conducted in North America.
• Less than 5% were delivered to groups who might typically be considered to be vulnerable or have low wellbeing (for example we found interventions for informal carers of people receiving palliative care and children in foster care)

The interventions were delivered in a range of settings including schools, homes, online, health and community centres, universities, nursing homes and outdoors.

We sorted interventions into six key themes:

*The distinction between themes 1 (emotion-based activities) and 2 (emotional skills development) is that 1 primarily involves activities and 2 primarily involves instructional teaching.

Findings by intervention theme/subtheme

Of the 18 discrete themes/sub themes:

• Five appear to be effective at improving life satisfaction
• Eight provide mixed evidence that they may improve life satisfaction
• Three did not provide statistically significant results that they improved life satisfaction
• Two had insufficient evidence to draw conclusions

Where interventions are effective, they mostly have a small effect on life satisfaction. We found Emotional Skill Development to have a moderate effect.

For a deeper dive which includes descriptions of all the sub themes and further insights into the effectiveness of interventions, see the supplementary information.

Life Satisfaction determinants review – key findings

The research question for this review was:
What are the long-term determinants of life satisfaction?

This review identified 49 studies conducted in the UK. All were panel or cohort studies, with over half using a sample of over 10,000 individuals.

Of the 49 studies we reviewed:

• Over a third followed up with participants between 6-10 years after the first survey.
• Over a fifth followed up between one and five years later.
• The remainder followed up over 11 years later.

We sorted interventions into six key themes:

*n= number of studies in each theme/sub-theme. n does not sum to 49 as many studies explored multiple factors.

For a deeper dive into factors found to have significant associations with life satisfaction, see the supplementary information.

How did we do it?

We worked with researchers from Kohlrabi to answer the two research questions. Each review was conducted separately but we used similar search criteria to ensure they would be complementary.

Search strategy

For inclusion in the reviews, studies had to meet these criteria:

*Some studies tested more than one intervention

Studies were excluded if they were:

• on a ‘clinical’ population¹A population with a formal medical diagnosis where the intervention was being delivered in response to that diagnosis. Individuals with a range of diagnoses may have taken part in studies but researchers were not delivering the interventions to populations that had been sampled because of their medical diagnosis. As a result research into, for example, improving the life satisfaction of cancer patients would not be included.
• related to the COVID-19 pandemic

Full flow diagrams of the searches, screening process and exclusion criteria can be found in the technical report. The international studies excluded from the life satisfaction determinants review and the COVID-19 studies from both reviews can be found on the What Works Wellbeing Website.

The strict inclusion criteria has resulted in a set of studies that score very highly on tools from the Joanna Briggs Institute that assess quality.²For more information see “2.6 Data extraction and critical appraisal” in the technical report page 13 As such, we can have confidence in the findings of the studies.³Using the Maryland Scale. these interventions all meet the primary Level 3 criteria: “Comparison of outcomes in treated group after an intervention, with outcomes in the treated group before the intervention, and a comparison group used to provide a counterfactual.” For more information on the Maryland scale please see: https://whatworksgrowth.org/resource-library/the-maryland-scientific-methods-scale-sms/

Study design

Randomised Controlled Trials, experiments or quasi-experiments can provide causal evidence through the use of a control group which does not receive the intervention. Randomised controlled trials are regarded as a very high standard of evidence.

In observational studies, researchers do not intervene in the participants’ lives but rather track them over time.

Approach to analysis

For both reviews, the research team and experts from the centre mapped interventions and determinants into themes and sub-themes.

To understand the effectiveness of interventions we:

• used differences in average (mean) life satisfaction scores from before to after the intervention, comparing the intervention and control groups. We used the first available follow-up after the intervention had been completed.
• used meta-analysis to compare effectiveness within some sub-themes, where appropriate.

For the determinants review we:

• took a narrative approach, pulling out key findings where available, as studies used contrasting statistical approaches and did not always present findings in ways that allowed quantitative differences to be easily compared. We explored changes to factors over subsequent waves of surveys which varied in length from survey to survey – this is noted in the technical report.

Read more about our analytical approaches and their limitations in the technical report.

The findings of the review raise important implications for future research.

Life satisfaction intervention review

Life satisfaction determinants review

Considering the reviews together

While each review was carried out independently, they were designed to be complementary. As such, it is important to consider what they tell us about life satisfaction collectively.

There are some promising overlaps:

1. Health – The determinants review highlighted health as a driver of life satisfaction, and the intervention review found a number of effective health interventions. Short- term interventions focused on health may support long-term improvements in wellbeing.
2. Arts and culture – The determinants review showed association between life satisfaction and arts and culture. The intervention review found a small number of effective interventions that used musical activities to improve life satisfaction.

There are also gaps:

1. Income and employment are critical factors for life satisfaction but there were only 20 interventions delivered in an employment context to working adults/in the workplace. Of these only five saw a statistically significant improvement in life satisfaction.
2. Social support – is identified as closely associated with life satisfaction in the determinants review. While the intervention review found 15 interventions that promoted the benefits of social interactions, none saw a statistically significant improvement in life satisfaction. These interventions may improve other areas of wellbeing, but they do not seem to be associated with life satisfaction in the same way as key relationships like a spouse or parent relationships are.

These examples bring to life the primary challenge of the two reviews: the gap between the macro-level, long term drivers of life satisfaction in the determinants review and the available individual-level or micro interventions shown to improve life satisfaction in the intervention review.

Currently, it is not easy to build a clear theory of change that links specific individual interventions like emotional skills development and therapy (micro-level) to important determinants, such as satisfying employment, educational attainment, or strong relationships (macro-level).

The determinants review identifies many of the foundational blocks of our life satisfaction – income, employment, education and social relationships. These might change “by chance” (for example through bereavement) or through long-term effort (for example gaining an additional qualification that opens up new opportunities).

The intervention review identifies specific and targeted activities that we might use as an individual to try and manage our life satisfaction like exercise, mindfulness, therapy or through the development of our emotional skills.

The relationships between different interventions and their impacts on the determinants of life satisfaction are complex. If we can construct pathways of interventions to secure important determinants of life satisfaction we could make important improvements in overall wellbeing. Interventions that produce even small but sustainable increases in life satisfaction are desirable, especially if they can be delivered to large populations at low cost.

To make progress, we need to establish more connections between the two evidence bases. The table below provides some prompts for interventions based on factors associated with life satisfaction in the determinants review and known policy interventions related to them. It is not exhaustive and is intended to aid thinking.

Abreu Scherer, I., Bignall-Donnelly, R., Crellin, R., Hey, N., Smithson, J. (2024) Life satisfaction: what works? Briefing, What Works Centre for Wellbeing