Hello, in my research paper, I have a dependent variable: financial stress level 1-10. I have a set of independent variables: behind on payments, bankruptcy, being contacted by creditors, and so on. All of this set of independent variables are measured 1-4 level. (1: Never and 4: Always).

I used ORDERED LOGISTIC REGRESSION to analyze what financial concerns have more effect on financial stress. First question: is this method, ORDERED LOGISTIC REGRESSION, correct?

After ORDERED LOGISTIC REGRESSION, I did find some relationships are significant, some are not. But my second question is: A problem is that the independent variables are highly correlated, I would guess, which violate required assumption, right? If someone is are behind on payments, more likely to worry about bankruptcy, more worried about creditors. Certainly that can reduce the explanatory value of a multivariate regression.