Consumer financial well-being : does scale choice alter the measure?

A crucial first step in helping consumers improve their financial lives is understanding their financial circumstances and well-being. The Financial Well-Being (FWB) scale measures a consumer's subjective well-being related to aspects of their financial circumstances. It is available in standard-length (10-item) and abbreviated (5-item) versions, but no research has compared how completing either version may alter consumers' responses. Notably, the 5-item scale includes a higher share of reverse-coded (i.e., negatively framed) items. We hypothesize that the difference in item framing between scale versions influences participants' feelings about their financial situation, predicting that completing the 5-item FWB scale will result in more negative responses compared to completing the 10-item FWB scale. To test this hypothesis, we implement a randomized survey experiment using the Understanding America Study. In our experiment with nearly 6,000 participants, we find that completing the 5-item versus the 10-item FWB scale reduces FWB scores (average decline in the 5-item FWB score of 0.9 points, 95% CI [-1.552, -0.249]), and increases the share with a "low" 5-item FWB score by 5.0 percentage points, 95% CI [0.028, 0.071]), responses to individual scale items, and self-rated FWB. This pattern is strongest among lower-income respondents (average decline in FWB score of 2.3 points, 95% CI [-3.385, -1.171] and increases the share with a "low" 5-item FWB score by 8.1 percentage points, 95% CI [0.041, 0.121]). These findings highlight that FWB scale choice can have unexpected consequences. We discuss the implications for research on FWB and on the measurement of well-being more broadly.