Predictors of domain-specific and global life satisfaction across the first half of life: which domains of life satisfaction are the most important for global life satisfaction?

While there have been several recent studies putting forward different predictors and outcomes of life satisfaction in various life domains, most have addressed life satisfaction as a whole, with only a handful investigating in detail life satisfaction in specific life domains. Based on a sample of 217 adults in the first half of life in Turkey (M-age = 23.85 years, SD = 5.75), the present study firstly explores predictors of life satisfaction as a whole and in six specific domains (i.e., satisfaction with social, health, financial, leisure, work and residence status), and then examines the unique contributions of the domain-specific areas to global life satisfaction. Adopting a 'bottom-up' approach, this study assesses the general self-efficacy, perceived social support, perceived control, global life satisfaction and satisfaction associated with various life domains, as well as the sociodemographic information of the participants. The findings reveal perceived social support and income level to be the most consistent predictors of global and domain-specific life satisfaction. Furthermore, after controlling for sociodemographic and psychological factors in a regression analysis based on beta values, financial, work, residence and social satisfaction made a marginally significant contribution to the enhancement of global life satisfaction. More importantly, there was no statistically significant difference between the contributions of these variables to global life satisfaction. The present study contributes to the existing body of literature on life satisfaction in demonstrating that individual domains of life satisfaction may be considered new targets for interventions aimed at increasing subjective well-being and life satisfaction.