Using the survey of consumer finances: Some methodological considerations and issues

We identify and present original analyses of four methodological issues related to using Survey of Consumer Finances data sets and illustrate these issues with recent articles published in this journal. The issues are recognizing that the respondent is not necessarily the household head, reporting race and ethnicity in conformity with Survey of Consumer Finances and federal standards, using the repeated-imputation inference method to combine the five implicates in each survey year's data set, and discussing the use of weighted or unweighted data in multivariate analysis. We found a considerable variation in how authors dealt with these issues, which could hinder replication or comparison of research results. Authors and reviewers should consider methodological issues related to the Survey of Consumer Finances more carefully. Editor's note: After this refereed paper was accepted for publication, Jeanne M. Hogarth was asked to solicit comments and assume the role of moderator for the discussion essays. As editor as these commentaries, her observations immediately follow the article plus those of Darryl E. Getter and Sandra J. Huston.