Dorien Bangma

190 | CHAPTER 8 to them on a five-point scale (ranging from 1 = ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 = ‘strongly agree’ ). Total scores are calculated as the sum of items related to a specific decision style. Higher scores indicate that a specific style is more frequently used. Personal financial situation. Eight questions were asked to evaluate participants’ personal financial situation. Six questions required a yes-or-no response and focused on debts (i.e., ‘Do you have debts other than mortgage or study loans?’ ), social security (i.e., ‘Do you receive social security?’ ), saving money (i.e., ‘Do you have a savings account?’ and ‘Do you save actively, i.e., do you put money on your savings account on a regular basis?’ ), saving for retirement (i.e., ‘Do/have you save(d) money for retirement?’ ) and owning a house (i.e., ‘Do you own a house?’ ). The annual gross income of participants was evaluated on a five-point scale (i.e., 1 = ‘ < €15,000’ , 2 = ‘€15,000 - €25,000’ , 3 = ‘€25,000 - €35,000’ , 4 = ‘€35,000 - €45,000’ , and 5 = ‘> € 55,000’ ). Finally, participants had to indicate the amount of money they retained each month after deduction of fixed expenses (in Euros). A second income (of, e.g., a partner) was not taken into account. Personality. To evaluate personality, the NEO – Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) was used (Costa & McCrae, 1992). With 60 items, the NEO-FFI measures the Big Five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Participants have to indicate to what extent each item reflects their opinion on a five-point scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ . For each scale, a maximum score of 60 can be obtained, with high scores indicating that a personality trait fits a person. The internal consistency of the Dutch version of the NEO-FFI is acceptable to good ( Cronbach’s alpha = .57 to .88) and the inter-correlations of the scales are negligible to weak ( r = .00 to .41; Hoekstra et al., 1996). Symptoms of depression. Symptoms of depression were evaluated using the Dutch version of the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II-NL; Beck et al., 1996; van der Does, 2002). For each of the 21 items, participants have to indicate which out of four descriptions reflects their mood in the last two weeks (e.g., 0 = ‘I do not feel sad’ , 1 = ‘I feel sad’ , 2 = ‘I am sad all the time and I can’t snap out of it’ and 3 = ‘I am so sad or unhappy that I can’t stand it’ ). Total scores range from 0 to 63 with higher scores indicating more symptoms and/or more severe symptoms of depression. The internal consistency of the BDI-II-NL is good ( Cronbach’s alpha = .88 to .92) and the construct validity is strong ( r = .79 to .85; van der Does, 2002). Procedure and ethics Data was collected between 2014 and 2019. Participants had to complete the questionnaires online which were distributed via Qualtrics (Qualtrics, 2019). Participants were recruited by using an online research panel and via the social networks of the researchers using social media, email or word of mouth. Participants recruited via the online research panel received a small financial compensation for participation, all other participants received no compensation. All participants had the Dutch nationality and were 18 years or older. Initially, 1475 participants were recruited for the study. Participation was voluntary and participants could withdraw from the study at any time. Consequently, 79 participants (5.4%) began but discontinued the questionnaire and were therefore not taken into account. Of the 79 participants who