Adolescent Measures of Family Socioeconomic Status: Reliability, Validity, and Effects on Substance Use Behaviors in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a robust predictor of health disparities in adolescence and early adulthood, yet obtaining accurate and reliable measurements of family SES from younger participants remains a challenge. We evaluated the reliability and validity of a subjective SES measure, i.e., perceived family financial security (PFS), which assesses adolescents’ perceptions of whether their family has enough money to meet their needs. We also examined the predictive associations of PFS and parental education (adolescent reports) with alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use during adolescence and young adulthood. Longitudinal data were obtained from 593 parent–child dyads in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, who were assessed eight times between 2005 and 2014. Present analyses included data from four annual assessments conducted when the participating children were adolescents (age range = 10.25–16.33 years) and a final follow-up in young adulthood (age range = 20–23.42 years). PFS had good test–retest reliability and convergent validity with other parent and adolescent reported SES measures. Adolescent-reported PFS significantly predicted tobacco use frequency in young adulthood, whereas adolescent-reported parental education predicted alcohol use frequency. PFS was not a significant predictor of alcohol or marijuana use. Findings suggest that PFS can be a psychometrically sound measure to assess a unique dimension of SES in adolescent samples, with differential predictive associations among substance use outcomes in young adulthood compared to more traditional measures like parental education. Future research should evaluate the psychometric properties and utility of PFS as a complementary SES measure.