May 31, 2018
The Validation of a theoretically motivated approach to measuring childhood socioeconomic circumstances (V1.0) release is now available.
The financial capital, social capital, and human capital variables are coded so higher numbers reflect higher capital, and the cSES index is coded so higher numbers reflect higher SES in childhood.
Financial instability was reverse coded so higher numbers reflect more instability to make the direction of the variable more consistent with the name of the variable. To calculate the financial capital scale from the two factors, first reverse-code the financial instability factor, and then sum the factors.
If you use these measures, please cite the article: Vable AM, Gilsanz P, Nguyen TT, Kawachi I, Glymour MM (2017) Validation of a theoretically motivated approach to measuring childhood socioeconomic circumstances in the Health and Retirement Study. PLoS ONE 12(10): e0185898. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185898