Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Multidimensional Subjective Financial Well-Being Scale in Brazilian Adults

Abstract

The financial situation of Brazilians is a frequent topic of research due to the country’s financial instability. However, there are few instruments available to measure financial constructs in Brazil. Therefore, this study aims to conduct the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of The Multidimensional Subjective Financial Well-being Scale (MSFWBS) for Brazilian adults. To ensure the conceptual adaptation and language clarity of instrument items, experts (n = 5) and target population (n = 15) were invited to rate (quantitative data) and comment (qualitative data) on instrument adequacy. After the cross-cultural adaptation, multiple psychometric properties (reliability evidence, factorial, convergent and external validity) of the Brazilian MSFWBS version were assessed among 529 Brazilian adults. Through an exploratory factor analysis done by the extraction method of minimum rank factor analysis, we found the same 5-factor multidimensional structure proposed in the MSFWBS original version. The items showed adequate factor loadings and the retained factors explained 66.3% of the shared item’s variance, with reliability evidence range from ω = 0.83 to .94 among the factors. We also found convergent (with well-being and psychopathological symptoms) and external (with occupational status) validity of MSFWBS scores. Therefore, our results demonstrated that the instrument is adequate to measure Brazilian adults’ subjective financial well-being. This study contributes to the advancement of the research on financial well-being by providing a new measurement for Brazilian adults.