Assessment of financial decision making: an informant scale

ABSTRACT

Older adults with cognitive impairment are a population at great risk for financial exploitation. At-risk older adults often have difficulty reporting on their own financial abilities. Collecting information from trusted others is vital for professionals investigating the financial exploitation older adults. There are few reliable, valid, and standardized informant-report measures of financial capacity, and none that assess decisional abilities for an ongoing, real-world financial transaction. The present study sought to examine the psychometric properties of a new informant-report scale of financial decisional abilities in older adults. One hundred fifty participants were recruited to complete the Family and Friends and Interview regarding a known older adult’s financial decisional abilities. A factor analysis identified two subscales. The full scale had adequate sensitivity and specificity to detect an informant’s current concerns regarding financial exploitation. The Family and Friends Scale is a useful tool for collecting informant-report regarding an older adult’s ability to make financial transactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial decision making
• financial exploitation
• financial judgment
• informant-report

Acknowledgments

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Justice [MU-CX-0001], The Department of Justice is not responsible for the findings and conclusions cited in this study; National Institutes of Health [P30 AG015281]; Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research; American House Foundation; Retirement Research Foundation; and Michigan Alzheimer’s Center Core grant [#P30AG053760].