Nonresponse widely exists in social science surveys and may cause data quality issues for survey users. The motivation for reporting nonresponse yet varies over different scenarios, and may include burden and privacy concerns. Especially for financial-related questions, respondents may hesitate to reveal their actual financial details, or consider identifying exact numbers too burdensome. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), this paper intends to provide an improved measure of household financial complexity, based on the number of applicable financial-related questions. The improved measure is adjusted for respondents’ reporting biases with financial-related questions, by adopting the paradata available in the SCF. This paper will discuss the validity of the improved measure, including its association with other measures for the complexity of a household’s financial situation. The process of generating the improved measure may shed light on future research that handles paradata or reporting biases. The improved measure may help data users and financial consultants to better understand the financial situation of a U.S. household.

Accepted Oral Presentation