Members of the FSWI steering committee, including Dr. Christine Callahan, Research Assistant Professor at the UMSSW, and Dr. James Kunz, Associate Professor and Program Director, McDaniel College Department of Social Work (co-principal investigators on this research), and Dr. Jodi Jacobson Frey, Associate Professor at the UMSSW, Chair of the FSWI and Chair of the EAP Subspecialization (co-investigator on this research), were awarded a grant from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation in late 2014.
The project involves conducting a secondary data analysis of the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS) as it was administered to survey respondents in the American Life Panel (ALP) Survey, administered by the RAND Corporation. (This is a nationally representative sample of individuals aged 18 and over who have agreed to participate in online surveys.)
The data analysis to be undertaken by FSWI will merge these respondents’ answers to another set of surveys administered through the American Life Panel making inquiry into psychosocial well-being. The project thus will merge these three datasets resulting from surveys administered to RAND’s American Life Panel. The upshot of this project will be to consider the impact of psychosocial well-being on financial capability. This research will address a need, on the part of both the financial industry and the helping professions, to better understand how psychosocial factors can affect the financial capability of their clients. Work on this will commence in May 2015 and will continue for 17 months. Final products will include not only a summary brief (aimed at lay audiences) and manuscripts for several academic journals (one emphasizing the findings themselves, the other emphasizing practice and policy implications), but also the development of a continuing education course for social workers and other members of the helping professions and a nationally broadcast webinar aimed at members of both the financial industry and the helping professions.
For further information on this research project, please contact Dr. Christine Callahan at ccallahan@ssw.umaryland.edu.
Drs. James Kunz (McDaniel College) and Christine Callahan (UMSSW) will present a poster on "Psychosocial Well-Being and Financial Capability" at the 2015 AFCPE Annual Research & Training Symposium, which will be held November 18-20 in Jacksonville, FL. They (Drs. James Kunz and Christine Callahan) will also present an oral paper of this work at the BPD Annual Conference, which will be held March 30-April 3, 2016, in Dallas, Texas.