Warning: package 'dplyr' was built under R version 4.3.2Warning: package 'kableExtra' was built under R version 4.3.216 Existential Security
Cluster: Motivational
16.1 Measure
The existential security measures were derived from those used by Baimel et al. (2022) and by Willard & Cingl (2017).
Modifications
The food security measure from Baimel et al. (2022) was combined with financial and physical security from Willard & Cingl (2017), these were asked for ‘recently’ and ‘for the forthcoming months’. We also included social security, wealth inequality and social trust measures from Willard & Cingl (2017), these were altered to have a 7-point Likert scale for agreement as the response options.
16.2 Implementation
For this questionnaire each subscale appears on its own page with the subscale specific text above.
Question wording
The question wording was as follows:
| Questions | Question Text |
|---|---|
| es_01 - es_07 | Recently have you: |
| es_08 - es_16 | When thinking about the forthcoming months do you: |
| es_15 - es_21 | When growing up did you: |
| ss, wi, st | To what extent do you agree with the following statements: |
Items
The question items were as follows:
Existential Security
| Qlabel | question |
|---|---|
| es_01 | worried that your household may not able to buy or produce enough food to eat? |
| es_02 | felt that you cannot afford to buy items you need |
| es_03 | worried that you do not have enough money |
| es_04 | worried about losing your job |
| es_05 | felt unsafe walking alone in your local area after dark |
| es_06 | worried about being burgled |
| es_07 | worried about being a victim of violent crime |
| es_08 | worry that your household may not able to buy or produce enough food to eat? |
| es_09 | feel that you may not be able to afford to buy items you need |
| es_10 | worry that you may not have enough money |
| es_11 | worry about losing your job |
| es_12 | feel you will be safe walking alone in your local area after dark |
| es_13 | worry about being burgled |
| es_14 | worry about being a victim of violent crime |
| es_15 | worry that your household may not able to buy or produce enough food to eat? |
| es_16 | feel that your household may not be able to afford to buy items you need |
| es_17 | worry that your household may not have enough money |
| es_18 | worry about members of your household losing their job |
| es_19 | feel you will be safe walking alone in your local area after dark |
| es_20 | worry about being burgled |
| es_21 | worry about being a victim of violent crime |
Social Security, Wealth Inequality, Social Trust
| ss_01 | government help would be sufficient if you lose your job |
| ss_02 | the national health services will take good care of you if you fall sick |
| ss_03 | the country’s social security system works well |
| wi_01 | people who start out poor can become wealthy if they work hard enough |
| wi_02 | most rich people acquire their wealth by some illegal methods |
| wi_03 | there is too large of a gap between rich and poor |
| st_01 | most people can be trusted |
| st_02 | most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance |
| st_03 | most of the time people try to be helpful |
Coding
Items on the existential security subscale use the following frequency based Likert scale:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| never | very infrequently | infrequently | sometimes | frequently | very frequently | always |
Items on the social security, wealth inequality and social trust subscales follow our standard scoring for agreement based measures, with strongly disagree = 1, and strongly disagree= 7.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| strongly disagree | moderately disagree | slightly disagree | neither agree nor disagree | slightly agree | moderately agree | strongly agree |
es_12, es_19, wi_01 & st_01 are reverse coded
Scoring
The following variables are derived form this measure:
| Variable Name | Variable Label | Description | Variable Type | Source (Section) | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Existential Security (current) | ex_sec_cur | Current existential security score | numeric | Existential Security | mean es_01: es_07 |
| Existential Security (future) | ex_sec_future | Future existential security score | numeric | Existential Security | mean es_08: es_14 |
| Existential Security (upbringing) | ex_sec_upb | Upbringing existential security score | numeric | Existential Security | mean es_15: es_21 |
| Social Security | social_sec | Social security score | numeric | Existential Security | mean ss_01: ss_03 |
| Wealth Inequality | wealth_ineq | Wealth inequality score | numeric | Existential Security | mean wi_01: wi_03 |
| Social Trust | social_trust | Social trust score | numeric | Existential Security | mean st_01: st_03 |