This scale measures the degree to which a person believes he or she has a sufficient amount of money or, at the other extreme, feels like money is lacking. De La Rosa and Tully (2022) phrased the scale for use after a life-simulation task in which participants incurred income and expenses across Studies 3 through 6, referring to the construct as subjective wealth perceptions; the scale can be easily modified to ask about a person's actual financial circumstances instead.
101-point scale (0=Not at all, 100=Very Much)
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Alphas were .93, .89, and .90 for Studies 3, 4, and 5, respectively (De La Rosa and Tully 2022, pp. 999, 1000, 1003); the alpha was not reported for Study 6. Validity was not discussed per se, though a principal component analysis with items from an unrelated prediction-uncertainty scale showed the two loaded on separate factors, offering preliminary support for unidimensionality and discriminant validity. Items follow the stem "As you were going through the simulation, to what extent did you feel like you..."; with modification (e.g., "Given your current financial status, to what extent do you feel like you have a lot of money") the scale could measure actual rather than simulated financial status — pretesting is recommended before using a modified version. Named 'Financial Status' in the handbook; renamed here to avoid collision with an existing entry (ID 1535, Argo and Main 2008) describing a different construct (perceived frugality/poverty of another person).
De La Rosa, Wendy and Stephanie M. Tully (2022), "The Impact of Payment Frequency on Consumer Spending and Subjective Wealth Perceptions," Journal of Consumer Research, 48 (6), 991-1009.
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