Understanding Chinese lesbians' subjective well-being during sexual identity development

The current study assessed subjective well-being of Chinese lesbians during sexual identity development stages from all components of subjective well-being, which included Satisfaction with Life, Hope, Happiness, and Depression. It was hypothesized that later stages of Chinese lesbian identity formation as assessed on the Stage Allocation Measure (Cass, 1979) would be associated with a higher level of Hope, Satisfaction with Life, Happiness, and a lower level of Depression.;MANCOVA was used to analyze the differences in participants' sexuality, numbers of years of being a lesbian, age, nationality, changes of residency, relationship, education, levels of disclosure, and sexual identity stages for each of the dependent variables (Satisfaction with Life, Hope, Happiness, and Depression). Stepwise Discriminant Analysis was used to follow up with dependent variables found to be significantly related to participants' changes of Residency, Relationship, Education, levels of Disclosure, and Sexual Identity Stages.;Results revealed that participants' lesbian identity development stages had statistical significance on their scores of Satisfaction with Life and Hope. And later stages of Chinese lesbian identity formation as assessed on the SAM were associated with a higher level of Satisfaction with Life and Hope. What's more, participants' change of Residency had a statistically significant influence on their scores of Depression and Satisfaction with Life. Participants' different Relationship levels had statistically significant differences on their scores of Satisfaction with Life and Happiness. Additionally, those with higher education reported being happier and less depressed. Finally, participants' different Disclosure levels of their homosexuality also were related to statistically significant difference on their scores of Satisfaction with Life, Hope, and Happiness.;Over the course of two weeks, 1084 participants located in 22 different countries were recruited through 39 Chinese lesbian websites. Of those, 659 completed survey questionnaires were used for data analysis. Participants were limited to female Chinese citizens that were emotionally (romantically in love) or sexually attracted to other females. The following instruments were used in this study: Stage Allocation Measure (SAM); Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991); the Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985); the Depression-Happiness Scale (McGreal & Joseph, 1993); and Demographic Questionnaire.