Emerging adults’ financial well-being: protocol for a scoping review

Abstract

ABSTRACT Introduction: The financial well-being is a construct studied by different disciplines (i.e. economy, sociology, psychology) but shared definition and operazionalization miss. Actually, the financial well-being is strongly relevant for emerging adults (subjects aged 18-29), because their financial condition has characteristics different from the adults’ one and because the economic crisis of 2008 damaged the youth a lot. Our goal is to examine the extent, range, and nature of research activity related to emerging adults’ financial well-being, in order to create a cross-disciplinary definition of financial well-being and identify its components as well as its predictors and outcomes. Furthermore, this review could identify research gaps in the existing literature. Methods and analysis: The review will be made using the guidelines proposed by Arksey and O'Malley (2005). We will search relevant electronic databases (i.e. PsycInfo, Scopus, EconPapers) and grey literature (e.g. conferences’ list of abstracts). The scoping review will consider the records in which the variable “financial well-being” (or its synonymous: economic well-being, financial wellness, financial satisfaction, income satisfaction) is relieved from a sample of emerging adults. Two reviewers will independently screen titles, abstracts and full-text articles, and will complete data abstraction. We will create summary tables providing the characteristics of the included studies, and the information related to the participants’ financial well-being and their stage of life. Finally, we will apply meaning to the results and consider the implications of review findings to policy, practice, or research. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required as our study will not include confidential participant data and interventions. We will disseminate our results through a peer-reviewed publication.