The Subjective Financial Well-being Scale (SFWBS) for emerging adulthood: Development and Validation in Italy and Portugal.

The study of emerging adults’ financial condition has become a frequent research topic, as the young generation was the mostly hurt by the 2008 crisis. This new trend stressed the need for instrument to measure the emerging adults’ financial well-being. The current study aims to develop a new instrument measuring the subjective financial well-being of emerging adults, based on the theorization of Sorgente and Lanz [Adolescent Research Review, 2(4), 255 (2017)] and adopting the methodological and statistical procedures proposed by the contemporary view of validity [see Hubley & Zumbo, Social Indicators Research, 103(2), 219 (2011)]. The instrument was originally developed in Italy, but validity evidence about the “subjective financial well-being” construct was collected both in Italy and Portugal. To develop items situated in the context of application of the scale, eight interviews with experts of Italian emerging adults’ financial condition were performed. Thematic analyses were used to generate the 45 items. These items were tested trough eight cognitive interviews with Italian emerging adults, who suggested to remove one item. The 44 items were then tested on 374 Italian emerging adults performing item analysis and CFA. The final structure of the scale (25 items) consists of five factors: general subjective financial well-being, financial future, peer comparison, having money, and money management. We collected score structure, convergent, criterion, generalizability, known group, and reliability evidence performing different SEM models on an Italian sample of 516 emerging adults. Finally, measurement invariance was tested between Italian (N = 295) and Portuguese (N = 124) versions