Financial Stress

Abstract: The Financial Stress Questionnaire is a 9-item instrument, developed by the Fast Track project, that explores sources of household spending and adequacy of funds for paying bills. The Questionnaire is administered to parents. The parent is asked to evaluate the affordability of 7 spending sources in the household (home, clothing, furniture, car, food, medical care and leisure) on a 1 to 5 scale (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree); how much difficulty he/she had to pay the bills on a 1 to 5 scale (a great of difficulty to no difficulty at all) and how much money was left at the end of the month on a 1 to 4 scale (not enough, just enough, some money left, more than enough money left over). This measure has been administered since spring of 1994. This measure contains no subscales. A score is calculated as the mean of the seven spending source items times 7. Item scores for the two questions that explore adequacy of monthly funds are reported separately. T-tests of means show significant differences between the normative and control groups for the Spending Source Score and for Item 8: Difficulty Paying Bills. Alpha coefficients for the Spending Source Score suggests that this score is useful. Researchers should note that the order in which responses for Item 8 and Item 9 are coded is in the opposite direction from Items 1-7.

Who Completed this Measure?: Parent

Cohort 1 - Administrative History

Year 04 | grade 3 | age 9
Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11
Year 07 | grade 6 | age 12
Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
Year 10 | grade 9 | age 15
Year 11 | grade 10 | age 16
Year 12 | grade 11 | age 17

Cohort 2 - Administrative History

Year 03 | grade 2 | age 8
Year 04 | grade 3 | age 9
Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11
Year 07 | grade 6 | age 12
Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
Year 10 | grade 9 | age 15
Year 11 | grade 10 | age 16
Year 12 | grade 11 | age 17

Cohort 3 - Administrative History

Year 02 | grade 1 | age 7
Year 03 | grade 2 | age 8
Year 04 | grade 3 | age 9
Year 05 | grade 4 | age 10
Year 06 | grade 5 | age 11
Year 07 | grade 6 | age 12
Year 08 | grade 7 | age 13
Year 09 | grade 8 | age 14
Year 10 | grade 9 | age 15
Year 11 | grade 10 | age 16
Year 12 | grade 11 | age 17

Technical Reports:

Raw Dataset Name: PyU

Scored Dataset Name: FSIySPc

Keywords:
Family Finances, Financial Difficulties, Household Expenses, Money

Is this Measure Available for Public Use?: Yes

Obtain Measure:
Download the measure here

SAS Code for Scale Creation:
Download the code here

Measure Items and Scales:

COHORT	Cohort
TCID	Child's ID number
YEAR	Year of Participation in Study
P4U1	My family has enough money to have the kind of home we would like to have.
P4U2	We have enough money to afford the kind of clothing we should have.
P4U3	We have enough money to afford the kind of furniture or household equipment we should have.
P4U4	We have enough money to afford the kind of car we need.
P4U5	We have enough money to afford the kind of food we should have.
P4U6	We have enough money to afford the kind of medical care we should have.
P4U7	We have enough money to afford the kind of leisure and fun activities we want to participate in.
P4U8	Think back over the past year and tell us how much difficulty you had with paying your bills.
P4U9	Generally, at the end of each month do you end up with (not enough money, just enough, some, more than enough).
FSI4SSS	FSI4 Spending Source Score