Money Matters: Recommendations for Financial Stress Research in Occupational Health Psychology: Money matters
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sinclair2016 - p. 181
With these issues in mind, the overarching goal of the present paper was to address conceptual and measurement issues in the study of objective and subjective aspects of financial stress and review several assessment options available to occupational health psychology researchers for both aspects of financial stress.
sinclair2016 - p. 183
By objective financial deprivation, we refer to assessments of one’s current level of financial inputs, debts or resources.
sinclair2016 - p. 183
Direct income measures capture economic deprivation through an assessment of one’s total income, typically either from (1) a focal job (i.e. annual salary) or (2) one’s total household income.
sinclair2016 - p. 185
Adjusted income measures express an individual’s income in terms of contextual factors reflecting the individual’s resource demands. Two approaches to such measures include adjusting one’s income to reflect the financial demands and expressing measures in terms of relative income rank rather than overall income.
sinclair2016 - p. 186
Financial obligations measures extend research on income by assessing the financial obligations faced by an individual (i.e. demands) rather than their current access to financial resources. We distinguish two broad types of measures: (1) direct measures of an individual’s debt or other financial obligations and (2) indirect measures of financial demands through proxy measures, typically of demographics, thought to reflect differences between individuals in their financial resource demands.
sinclair2016 - p. 186
As the foregoing review indicates, researchers have a range of options to choose from when considering objective approaches to studying income.
sinclair2016 - p. 187
Thus, the relationship between financial deprivation and health in part resembles the stressor-strain-outcome model commonly used in OHP (Koeske & Koeske, 1993). Hence, we echo other researchers’ recommendations to have objective measures of income be complemented by measures of subjective perceptions of financial resources and satisfaction with financial status (Chan et al., 2002).
sinclair2016 - p. 187
Various terms have been used to describe subjective financial stress, including financial strain (Price, Choi, & Vinokur, 2002), economic or lifestyle deprivation (Whelan, 1992), financial stress (Kim & Garman, 2003), perceived income adequacy/inadequacy (Pereira & Coelho, 2013), financial capability (Taylor, Jenkins, & Sacker, 2011), financial hardship (Crosier, Butterworth, & Rodgers, 2007) and economic pressure (Conger et al., 2002).
sinclair2016 - p. 188
One important distinction in this literature is whether one uses absolute or relative measures of income. ‘Absolute’ measures are context free; they simply ask people to indicate their income on a given scale.
sinclair2016 - p. 189
Research on subjective income perceptions has identified two main components that guide subjective judgments of income adequacy (Prawitz & Garman, 2009): the ability to afford ‘basic needs’ and the ability to afford ‘lifestyle wants’
sinclair2016 - p. 189
A final set of considerations for subjective income measures concerns the temporal referent of the measure. Most economic stress research focuses on the present—individuals’ subjective reactions to their current financial circumstances. However, both perceptions about the past and expectations about the future also should be considered in economic stress research.