Subjective well-being has appeared as an interesting new subject of Positive Psychology, and as such, has received increasing attention from researchers of the area. In this study the aim was to verify the effectiveness of three self-report instruments of subjective well-being in a population of college students in Ribeirão Preto. The data was submitted to descriptive statistics analysis and to Principal Component Analysis of the results presented in the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire and the Subjective Happiness Scale. Both the instruments presented Cronbach's alpha values adjusted for men and women's results, and for all groups. The Global Happiness Item was analyzed only by means of descriptive statistics, because there was only one item presented. Previous researches have indicated no significant difference between auto-evaluations made by men and women. The results of the present study indicate that this confirmed as regards the medians presented in all the instruments, however, they point out significant differences are presented as regards the structure of the instruments of men and women for the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire.
Self-evaluation; Well-Being; College students
