Metrics Supporting Statement B 4.16.14 Revisions

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU
INFORMATION COLLECTION REQUEST – SUPPORTING STATEMENT
PART B
DEVELOPMENT OF METRICS TO MEASURE FINANCIAL WELL-BEING OF
WORKING-AGE AND OLDER AMERICAN CONSUMERS
(OMB CONTROL NUMBER: 3170-XXXX)

B. COLLECTIONS OF INFORMATION EMPLOYING STATISTICAL METHODS
1. Respondent Universe and Selection Methods
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has contracted with CFED to collect data to support
the development of metrics to measure financial well-being and financial ability. CFED has, in
turn, subcontracted with Vector Psychometric Group, LLC (VPG) to conduct the psychometric
analysis in support of the development of these metrics. VPG uses methods based on item
response theory (IRT) in its metric development process. IRT-based methods are not
probabilistic—they do not assume that the data being analyzed are from a random or statistically
representative sample. IRT-based analysis does however require a large, socio-demographically
diverse sample. Large, diverse samples help ensure stable parameters around a wide-range of
possible item responses and enables analysts to test the performance of the metrics in different
subgroups of interest.
CFED and its subcontractors will work with Survey Sampling International (SSI) to collect data
from working-age and older Americans that are sufficiently large and socio-demographically
diverse. 1 Specifically, CFED and its subcontractors will provide SSI with socio-demographic
recruitment targets. The 2010 Census with respect to income, education, employment status,
marital status, age, gender, race/ethnicity, presence/ages of children and geography will be used
as a guideline for recruitment targets when possible to help ensure socio-demographic diversity.
SSI will recruit until the specified socio-demographic targets are met and then they will close the
project to those subgroups. SSI is a global company and one of the largest providers of sampling,
data collection and data analytics services. SSI adheres to World Association for Social, Opinion
and Market Research (ESOMAR) standards and is Grand Mean audited through Sample Source
Auditors and annually audited by Ernst & Young. In 2012, SSI successfully completed 29
million surveys/questionnaires in 78 countries.
SSI will collect for this project completed questionnaires from 14,300 Americans (7,800
working-age and 6,500 older Americans), drawn from its opt-in panel of Americans who are age
18 and older and have access to the internet from some location. In the future and with
independent OMB review and approval, the CFPB may field the questionnaire developed via this
requested information collection to a randomly selected, representative sample of the US
1

‘Working-age Americans’ include Americans ages 18-61 and ‘older Americans’ includes Americans ages 62 and
older.

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population in order to examine the instruments’ performance in such a population.
SSI’s opt-in convenience sampling frame (the persons who have the potential to be part of the
sample that SSI will collect for this study), includes “the unique audience across a set of SSI web
“properties” [generally online advertisements] who notice the invitation to join and are motivated
to act on it.” 2 SSI asks persons who respond to their invitations to complete a brief online
questionnaire that includes socio-demographic questions. After receiving the responses to this
questionnaire, SSI utilizes a suite of quality control procedures including digital fingerprinting,
to avoid duplication. Additionally, SSI samples incoming participants with its blending
questionnaire, which asks behavior and psychographic questions in order to monitor the
consistency of the sample coming into the system.
The sampling frames, for the purposes of this study, include working-age Americans (US
residents ages 18 to 61) and older Americans (ages 62 and older) who are actively participating
in an SSI panel. From these sample frames, SSI will develop “out go” or contact groups. Persons
in the “out go” group will receive invitations to take the questionnaires being fielded as part of
this project. The contact group will be sufficiently diverse to ensure that the respondents meet the
target demographics. Because some individuals are more likely than others to respond to the
participation invitation, the contact group will likely resemble the target demographics to a lesser
degree than the group of participants completing the questionnaires. This is because SSI takes
into account the fact that the take-up rate varies by target group. For example, the contact group
is likely to contain a much larger number of males ages 18 to 24 than females ages 45 to 54
given the differences in each group’s likelihood of responding (the older females being more
likely to respond than the younger males). SSI monitors participation rates within the target
demographics (age, education, income, gender, race/ethnicity, geography) and adjusts the “out
go” as necessary to ensure the resulting data set meets the target demographics.
Following the psychometric analysis of the item-level data, VPG will compare online, paperand-pencil as well as phone versions of the questionnaire using a third data set provided by SSI.
The analyses performed using this data set will focus on the stability of the item parameters
across these different modes.
Sample

Working-age
Americans

Population
universe

~140 million
individuals in the
US ages 18 and
older who access
the internet from
some location

SSI sampling
frame

Persons receiving
an invitation from
SSI to participate
in the survey

Number of SSIfielded
completed
surveys

1.02 million
individuals ages
18 and older
participating in
SSI panels

Approximately
280,000 SSI panel
participants

7,800 SSI panel
participants ages
18-61

2

See “Mixing the Right Sample Ingredients: A New Source Recipe.” Pete Cape, Kristin Cavallaro and Jackie Lorch.
Survey Sampling International Memo.

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Older Americans

~23 million
individuals in the
US ages 62 and
older who access
the internet from
some location

180,000
individuals ages
62 and older
participating in
SSI panels

Approximately
120,000 SSI panel
participants

6,500 SSI panel
participants ages
62 and older

2. Information Collection Procedures
VPG relies on IRT-based methods in its metrics development process. IRT-based methods are
not probabilistic—they do not assume that the survey data being analyzed are from a random
sample. IRT-based analysis does however require a large, socio-demographically diverse sample.
Large, diverse samples help ensure stable parameters around a wide-range of possible survey
responses and enable analysts to test the performance of the metrics in different subgroups (for
example, low-, middle- and high-income groups).
The contractor will work with SSI to obtain data from 7,800 working-age Americans and 6,500
older Americans whose socio-demographic profiles meet the specified demographic targets.
No population inferences will be made using this data.
3. Methods to Maximize Response Rates and Address Issues of Non-Response
Survey respondents will come from existing panels managed by Survey Sampling International
(SSI). Agreements regarding incentive payments were established between SSI and the panelist
at the time s/he was recruited. For example, when signing up for OpinionWorld, a panel
administered by SSI, respondents are able to choose from a variety of incentives including
donations to a preferred charity, entries into a drawing for a monetary prize, etc. The incentives
respondents will receive are not specific to this survey. SSI offers a wide variety of incentives in
order to increase diversity of its sample frames because different types of rewards will motivate
different respondents to participate in a survey.
For a questionnaire of this length and type, a typical rate of return in convenience samples,
defined as opening the email and completing the questionnaire, is roughly 3 to 5 percent. This
rate of return is typical of online panels. The participation rate or the percent of panelists
entering the project (i.e., clicked on the link and made it to the welcome and introduction) who
completed the questionnaire is roughly 80 percent for SSI panels.
High return and participation rates for this study will be encouraged through several means,
including carefully worded and market research tested invitation emails, thoughtful planning of
the participant experience that capitalizes on the latest survey research (for example, ensuring
that questionnaires conducted as part of the panel are short enough to completed before
respondent fatigue sets in), and follow-up/reminder emails to non-respondents. In addition, SSI
has a strong set of incentives designed to appeal to respondents across demographic and
behavioral groups to ensure participation without biasing results. Ensuring a quality participant
experience is central to SSI’s survey recruitment strategy.
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SSI will also try to maximize rate of return by emphasizing the importance of this study in its
participation invitation emails. SSI will also send a reminder email to non-respondents offering
them second and third opportunity to participate.
4. Testing of Procedures or Methods
The entire purpose and planned process for this information collection is to test and refine item
wording and answer sets as well as evaluate modes of administration (online vs. telephone vs.
paper and pencil). Using responses from three distinct rounds of data collection, the contractor
will develop metrics to assess two constructs of interest (i.e., Financial Well- and Financial
Ability) using modern psychometric methods (e.g., Netemeyer et al. 2003; Thissen and Wainer
2001; Wirth and Edwards 2007). A large pool of candidate items (questions and response sets)
based on the finding from qualitative research, the project literature review, and a review of other
financially related questionnaires was developed (see attached Item Bank document for an initial
pool of questions on all anticipated topics). A panel of psychometric and content experts
reviewed and refined the pool of candidate items so that the remaining items are targeted and
well-worded. Cognitive interviewing of non-experts will further serve to refine the item pool and
items. No more than 120 items (defined as a statement, typically one sentence, to which the
participants will express their level of agreement) will be included in the refined item pool. This
number of items is specified to ensure that respondents are not overly burdened when responding
to the item pool.
In round I, SSI will field the candidate items online to approximately 2,500 working-age and
2,000 older Americans. A preliminary round of data will be collected to ensure there are no
substantial problems with the items, as described in part A of the Supporting Statement. When
the main data from the first round is received, it will be thoroughly investigated for each agegroup individually and any necessary recoding or flagging of questionable response patterns
(typically called “data cleaning”). Data cleaning efforts include, but are not limited to,
identifying suspect response patterns (e.g., participants provides the same response for every
item), detailing any missing data occurrences which may be problematic at later stages, checking
for non-logical values (e.g., logically inconsistent responses across items), and reverse coding
items as needed to ensure responses to all items are in the same direction (i.e., more agreement
indicates a higher level of the construct of interest). With data cleaning complete, preliminary
data analysis will begin.
Preliminary data analysis, by age group (working-age vs. older), will be conducted. For each
item from the pool of candidate items, a frequency table of responses (and possibly a histogram
which depicts the same information graphically) will be obtained and examined. Additionally,
item-by-item 2-way contingency tables and a polychoric correlation matrix will be obtained.
These will be examined to identify any item pairs in which responses are not related as expected.
Classical test theory analyses (Cronbach’s alpha, item total correlations, etc.) will then be
conducted. Although these analyses will not be used in making final determinations of item
inclusion on the final version of the instruments, such analyses provide recognizable results for
those less familiar with modern scale development techniques and will provide a bridge to
understanding the results of the modern scale development techniques. To that end, for each
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construct, we will produce tables with the Cronbach’s alpha (internal consistency) value for each
scale, as well as the item-total correlation and “alpha if removed” value for each item.
Structural assessments will be conducted to ensure that an appropriate number of dimensions are
employed to model the relationships among the items for each construct. Exploratory and
confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA, respectively) model parameters will be obtained
from methods appropriate to the categorical nature of the data (e.g., Wirth & Edwards, 2007).
The fit of each model will be evaluated using several different fit indices with their customarily
accepted cut-off values indicating adequate fit (e.g., Bentler, 1990; Hu & Bentler, 1999; Browne
& Cudeck, 1993Steiger & Lind, 1980; Tucker & Lewis, 1973). To ensure that preferred models
are not over-fit to the data, each group within each data set will randomly be divided into two
sub-samples: one for exploratory modeling and the other for confirmatory modeling.
Item response theory (IRT) calibration analyses will be conducted within each age group for
each construct individually. The factor structure of the model for each construct will be the
model that was preferred based on EFA and CFA results. Item parameter results from the IRT
calibration of each construct will be presented in tables and in the form of trace line plots/item
characteristic curves (ICCs) for each item. An ICC for a given item represents the probability of
endorsing an item as a function of an individual’s level on the underlying construct.
Using the IRT calibration results and expert opinion, the candidate items used in round I of data
collection will be re-evaluated. Items that are performing poorly will be eliminated from further
use. An examination of the remaining items will be conducted to determine any content areas
that are not well-represented or areas on the construct continuum (e.g., ranges along the spectrum
from low financial well-being to high financial well-being) that are not well-measured. Item
development will be conducted to create items intended to fill any identified gaps.
Using the items that performed well in round I of data collection and the newly developed items,
new iterations of the financial well-being and financial ability metrics will be created. The
second round of online questionnaires (round II) will be fielded to 3,800 working-age and 3,000
older Americans. Analyses will follow the same structure as outlined previously. The IRT
calibration results of round II of data collection and expert opinion will inform the selection of
items to the final versions of the metrics for each construct.
As the final step of analyzing the phase II data, it is currently planned that analyses will be
conducted to assess if the performance of items differs across the two age groups, working-age
and older Americans. However, for these differential item functioning (DIF) analyses to be
conducted, it is necessary that there is a sufficient amount of overlap across age-groups, with
respect to the items selected for the final metrics. A feasibility review will be conducted to
determine, for each construct, if the overlap of the final scales for each age group is sufficient to
allow for comprehensive DIF testing across the age groups.
Assuming favorable results from the feasibility review and using the factor model(s) supported
by the structural assessments, DIF analyses will be conducted across the working and older
Americans age groups. The end result of such DIF analyses, if feasible, is that working-age and
older American item parameters will be on the same metric, which will allow scores across the
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age groups to be directly comparable to each other.
The final set of analyses is planned for the third round of data collection, which will contain
responses from 3000 individuals (1,500 working-age and 1,500 older Americans) and use three
different modes of item presentation: Online, Phone, and Paper-and-Pencil. For data from the
phone and paper-and-pencil collection modes, CFA models will be fit using the factor structure
mirroring that of the preferred model for each construct found using round II data, which was
collected via online item presentation only. Using the models supported by the CFA analyses,
IRT calibrations for these new presentation modes will also be conducted, individually for each
combination of construct and presentation mode. Next, DIF analyses will be conducted to
identify any item performance changes across the three presentation modes. Items with poor or
inconsistent performance across modes are candidates for removal. These analyses will be
conducted using the same procedures outlined in the previous paragraph. Finally, targeted
analyses will be conducted to provide preliminary indications of the construct validity (e.g.,
convergent and discriminant validity) for the newly finalized metrics. Appendix E provides a
table of the validation measures included in the data collection, as well as the expected direction
of the relationship for each variable/metric with the newly developed metrics. Analyses (e.g.,
correlational, ANOVA) will be conducted as appropriate for each combination of variables, in
consideration of the measurement properties and response distributions of the variables in
question. Validation is an on-going process, thus it is expected that future, independent research
examining the validity of the developed scales will be required.
5. Contact Information for Statistical Aspects of the Design

Anita Drever, Corporation for Enterprise Development, 202-027-0142, adrever@cfed.org
Leslie Eaton, Survey Sampling International, 703-282-0323
Leslie.Eaton@SurveySampling.com
Dee Warmath, Center for Financial Security, University of Wisconsin Madison,
262-312-0606, warmath@wisc.edu
R.J. Wirth, Vector Psychometric Group, LLC, 919-768-7142, RJWirth@VPGCentral.com
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