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Scholars often want to know what the interrelations of the means in subgroups of the population are, for example from the perspective of inequality or marginalization. When using a discrete response scale with a limited number of response options it will be a difficult task to derive this information from the survey results. This difficulty can be overcome if the Reference Distribution Method is applied to these survey results. Once a continuous distribution has been found to estimate a population mean for life satisfaction over time, it is also possible to estimate the means for subgroups of a population such as the least satisfied and the most satisfied part. We use the topics satisfaction with life and satisfaction with how democracy works in Western Europe, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe to demonstrate how the Reference Distribution Method can be used for this purpose.