Hi Brad. I'd start by using the research to collect up the scenarios. Only when I start seeing people in the research findings take different approaches would I then look to the individual's characteristics to see if those characteristics can explain the differences we're seeing.

For example, watching people open a bank account, I may discover that people with varying amounts of financial literacy encounter different challenges when opening an account. Folks familiar with the terminology of finance and banking ("interest rates" "overdraft" "credit lines") may have an easier time establishing the accounts they want than folks who don't.

Based on the patterns we see, we could create personas that differ in the financial literacy. We might state, in our persona descriptions, where their knowledge of finance and banking comes from (previous experience, education, past opportunities with wealth management). Then we have relevant details to put into a persona description.