Introduction:

Subjective well-being allows to know what people think and feel about their lives and their vital satisfaction. Subjective well-being is important at multiple stages of life, which is why UNICEF recommends incorporating it into studies with children and adolescents.

Objective:

Analyze the main evaluation tools and their properties that are used in the measurement of subjective well-being in adolescence in different contexts of Latin America.

Methods:

The search was performed in Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2010 to 2020. PRISMA guidelines were followed. There were extracted the methods, instruments and results of each study.

Analysis and integration of information:

14 articles were selected characterized by years, languages, countries, average ages of participants and methodological approaches. The main measures used and their psychometric characteristics are detailed.

Conclusions:

The scales to measure subjective well-being have solid psychometric properties and have been used in different sociocultural contexts and stages of child and adolescent development in Latin America, including the personal well-being index, the satisfaction scale with life, with life in general and with student life. All have an acceptable internal consistency of Cronbach's alpha. Subjective well-being can be measured to recognize the health, standard of living, achievements, security, interpersonal relationships, sense of belonging, living conditions, ideals, experiences, and satisfaction with life of young people who are immersed in contexts of domestic, community, social violence as well as globally.