Socio-economic Indexes in Surveys for Comparisons between Countries

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The study of socio-economic inequalities from a cross-national perspective has been hampered by the lack of adequate common indices of socioeconomic status that can be used in a self-report survey instrument. This paper examines the construction and the properties of global social indexes in general, and of the Family Affluence Scale (henceforth FAS) in particular. The paper proposes a new strategy for making comparisons of the global index with stratified data, building a revised FAS based on Adapted Canonical Variate Analysis (henceforth ACVA). This alternative strategy for constructing a global index is available in standard software, and the new proposal for stratified data only requires a simple program, which is justified, explained and provided in the text. Data come from the 1998 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC), a WHO Cross-National Study using cluster sampling of schoolchildren from five countries: Denmark, Latvia, Portugal, Scotland and the USA. The results reveal that in every country we would have had a completely different evaluation of the three indicators of Family Affluence if we had used either linear or non linear approaches to compute the global indexes. Moreover, Family Affluence comparisons among countries shows that the relative contribution of the three indicators to the overall FAS, changes from country to country. We conclude that separate indicators of Family Affluence are not equally relevant in each country and, as a consequence, do not contribute equally to the global index. For cross-cultural studies, the strategy for constructing an index should be country specific. The methodological developments presented in the paper open up opportunities to study socio-economic patterning of health among young people in the developed world, since self completed surveys can now employ a common measure of family material wealth. The findings show that the RFAS (Revised FAS) is a useful index of socio-economic status for use in national and cross-national surveys of adolescent health and health behaviour. The new strategy for weighting observed indicators in the index gives it enhanced power to detect inequalities.

Associations of behavioural, psychosocial and socioeconomic factors with over- and underweight among German adolescents

“…CATPCA is a non-parametric version of factor analysis suitable for analysis of categorical (ordinal) variables [25][26][27] . The obtained scores were dichotomised at median or into tertiles.…”

Association between acculturation and childhood vaccination coverage in migrant populations: a population based study from a rural region in Bavaria, Germany

“…To create the acculturation index, Categorical Principal Components Analysis (CATPCA) was used. CATPCA is a nonparametric version of factor analysis suitable for analysis of categorical (ordinal) variables, it has been recommended for combining information from several variables into a joint index, for example measuring socio-economic status [11][12][13] . In contrast to a simple additive index or classical principal component analysis, which are based on means across groups of cases, CATPCA is based on proportions in the respective categories of the variables 11 .…”

“…CATPCA is a nonparametric version of factor analysis suitable for analysis of categorical (ordinal) variables, it has been recommended for combining information from several variables into a joint index, for example measuring socio-economic status [11][12][13] . In contrast to a simple additive index or classical principal component analysis, which are based on means across groups of cases, CATPCA is based on proportions in the respective categories of the variables 11 . Optimal scores are created in order to obtain the highest correlation with the original variable values for each subject and to indicate the position of the respondent on the latent construct 13 .…”

The Short Attachment to Pets Scale (SAPS) for Children and Young People: Development, Psychometric Qualities and Demographic and Health Associations

“…The validated Family Affluence Scale (FAS) (Batista-Foguet et al 2004) was included in analysis as a measure of family wealth that assesses adolescents' absolute socioeconomic status based on material markers and is related to commonly used indices of material deprivation (Carstairs and Morris 1990) and home affluence (Wardle et al 2002). The FAS II version of the scale was used (Currie et al 2008); it comprised the following survey questions (with coding) : 1) Does your family own a car, van or truck?…”