Savings behaviors scale for adults in Buenos Aires, Argentina
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30545/academo.2025.n2.1084Keywords:
Savings, financial behaviors, psychometrics, economic psychologyAbstract
The process of constructing a scale to measure savings behaviors is presented, given that these are crucial to achieve stability and the fulfillment of goals, especially in unstable economies such as the Argentinean one. After drafting 16 items, these were subjected to expert judgment and administered to a non-probabilistic sample of 384 participants from the general population of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (57.6% women, mean age = 37.94 and SD = 14.98). A preliminary purification and an exploratory factor analysis based on the polychoric correlation matrix was then performed, implementing the unweighted least squares method for the extraction. The final version consists of 10 items with an ordinal Alpha and Omega of .86 and a single factor describing 45% of the variance. Its total score was associated with measures of Financial Anxiety, the Big Five Conscientiousness domain, Impulsive Buying and Money Management. Differential patterns were identified according to gender, social class and educational level. It is concluded that the Savings Scale has adequate evidence of validity and reliability, allowing to address the particularities of the local environment with great potential for clinical, institutional and financial use.
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