Translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and psychometric properties of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Financial Well-Being scale

Abstract Objective: To translate and back-translate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Financial Well-Being Scale into Brazilian Portuguese, to assess its cross-cultural semantic equivalence, and to verify the psychometric properties of the final version. Methods: Adaptation of the original scale applied a three-step methodology: translation and back-translation, appreciation of semantic equivalence, and administration to a convenience sample of 834 subjects. The analysis of psychometric properties comprised evaluation of evidence of the instrument’s validity by factor analysis, validity by contrasting groups, and internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The CFPB granted authorization to conduct cross-cultural adaptation into Brazilian Portuguese. Results: Results indicated adequate cultural adaptation between scales, with good equivalence between the original English version and the final Brazilian version. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the instrument’s internal consistency in this sample was 0.89. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated high levels of item reliability and goodness of fit, with all 10 items loading onto a single factor, financial well-being. The measure has shown structural stability in two different cultural contexts (Brazil and the USA). Conclusion: The Brazilian version demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties and adequate structural and cross-cultural validity and the participants found it easy to understand.


Introduction
Financial well-being is defined as a state of being financially healthy, happy, and free from financial worries. 1 From the perspective of consumers, financial well-being can be described as a feeling of being able to fully meet current and ongoing financial obligations, feeling secure about the financial future, and being able to make choices to enjoy life. [1][2][3][4] An individual's perspective on financial well-being is related to several variables such as personality characteristics, life experiences, behavior, concern, and personal judgment about the common personal finance topics of money, credit, and economic resources. 3 Furthermore, there is general agreement that financial empowerment plays an important role in economic security and the sense of self-sufficiency, with positive impacts on quality of life (QoL), health, and well-being. [4][5][6] The interface between psychology and economics has become a prominent field of research and is concerned with both the psychological basis of the economic behaviors of individuals and also the impacts of economic issues on individuals' psychology. For instance, data have shown that financial strains and negative reaction to an adverse economic condition is associated with reduced psychological well-being, 7 and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety among people who are over-indebted. 8  Data gathered from qualitative studies suggest that age can pose differences in the way people measure financial health. As such, data were collected and analyzed in two separate samples -older consumers (aged 62 and older) and younger consumers (aged 18-61). The authors have shown that the scale is onedimensional with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.89 and 0.90 (Online administration, age 18-61 and age 62+, respectively). 9 Objective measures of financial well-being are not yet available in Brazilian Portuguese. Financial education is key to promoting positive financial behaviors and to achieving better financial satisfaction and well-being.
For these reasons, understanding, measuring, and promoting financial well-being are important steps in promoting health and QoL. Brazil is a middle-income country that still needs to develop a culture of investing and saving as a means of achieving higher levels of welfare and satisfaction.
The main objectives of this study were to translate and back-translate the CFPB financial well-being scale into Brazilian Portuguese, to assess its cross-cultural semantic equivalence, and to verify the psychometric properties of the final version. As a secondary objective, the study analyzed the power of the Financial Well-Being scale to differentiate participants with regard to purchasing power and QoL, since it was expected that groups with higher levels of financial well-being would exhibit higher scores for purchasing power and QoL.

Methods
The CFPB Financial Well-Being instrument is a 10-item 5-point Likert scale, extensively tested and validated to ensure validity and reliability. The scale is driven by the consumer's perspective of their financial well-being and yields a single score, which captures its core elements, namely, control over one's finances, the capacity to absorb a financial shock, being on track to meet financial goals, and the capacity to make choices that allow one to enjoy life. 1,2,9 Each of the 10 items is rated according to a Likert label representing opinions and attitudes concerning specific financial topics: completely; very well; somewhat; very little; not at all (items 1-6), or always; often; sometimes; rarely; never (items 7-10). to the final score. 9 Determining the final score is a twostep process. The first step aims to determine the total response value or raw total. The total value is obtained by adding up each person's responses (from 0 to 4) to the individual items. This total response value will be used in step 2, in which it is converted into the CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale score. The final score incorporates respondent's age group, regardless of whether the questionnaire was self-administered or administered by someone else. The items allow a single score to be generated by measuring the core elements of financial well-being. 1,2,9 Ethics

Instruments
Sociodemographic measures and local criteria for economic classification were collected (gender, age, academic background, and Brazilian Economic Classification Score Criteria-CCEB). 11 The original CCEB has a categorical format and provides information on economic classes ranging from Class A to Class E according to a points system, as follows, economic

Results
The results from the translation and cross-cultural adaptation followed the steps mentioned above. The Since extraction of only one factor is not rotated and the number of factors had been defined, we used the principal axis factoring method for factor extraction and reliability calculations. Table 1 shows the results of principal axis factoring for the ten items, with communalities, variance explained, and Cronbach's alpha reliability index.
Aiming to verify the measure's structural stability and to verify the one-dimensionality of the Financial Well-Being construct in the Brazilian sample, all ten items from the second database (n = 417) were loaded into the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using the Maximum Likelihood method. The model to be tested was the matrix that resulted from the exploratory analysis and from previous studies. 9 Validity by contrasting groups was tested in order to investigate the power of the financial well-being construct to differentiate participants by purchasing

Discussion
The CFPB Financial Well-Being Scale is a reliable, public-domain tool that can be used to measure financial well-being, not only across different individuals, but also of the same individual over time. 9 The scale was better financial well-being scores. 9 In common with the original CFPB report, 9

Disclosure
No conflicts of interest declared concerning the publication of this article.