Measuring financial literacy with a Situational Judgement Test: do some groups really perform worse or is it the measuring instrument?

IF 1.6 Q2 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
Eveline Wuttke, Christin Siegfried, Carmela Aprea
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引用次数: 3

Abstract

Due to current trends in society and economy, financial literacy is often considered as an important twenty-first century skill. However, regardless of the postulated relevance, studies suggest that financial illiteracy seems to be a widespread phenomenon in the population of many nations. Some studies also show that some groups perform particularly poorly (e.g. women, persons with migration background and/or low level of education). These differences are often attributed to different individual characteristics such as abilities, dispositions or socialisation patterns. However, available research also suggests that even after controlling for them, a quite large portion of the performance differences between the various groups of test-takers remains unexplained. One explanation for performance gaps in financial literacy might be that differences in test scores could also be evoked by the test instruments itself and may thus, at least in part, be interpreted as testing bias. In this paper, we present a newly developed Situational Judgement Test, which is focused on financial competence. For this test, we examine whether differences between groups are attributable to individual differences or due to a test bias. To analyse a possible test bias, we tested one facet of financial literacy (with three factors: control of one’s financial situation, budgeting and handling of money) related to everyday money management for measuring invariance for different groups. If measuring invariance could be assumed, we analysed group differences by calculating t-tests. Results show that two factors of the test show measurement invariance for all groups considered (gender, migration and educational background, opportunities to learn). Group comparisons are thus possible and potential differences are not due to a test bias. For one factor, we can only assume measurement invariance for the group with/without migration background and with/without opportunities to learn in financial topics. When we look at group differences, we find that in contrast to the findings of many previous studies, the analysis of the mean differences does not show any systematic deficits in financial literacy for specific groups.

用情境判断测试衡量金融素养:是某些群体真的表现较差,还是测量工具的原因?
由于当前的社会和经济趋势,金融知识通常被认为是21世纪的一项重要技能。然而,抛开假定的相关性不谈,研究表明,金融文盲似乎是许多国家人口中普遍存在的现象。一些研究还表明,有些群体的表现特别差(例如妇女、具有移徙背景和/或教育水平低的人)。这些差异通常归因于不同的个人特征,如能力、性格或社交模式。然而,现有的研究也表明,即使在控制了这些因素之后,不同组的考生之间的很大一部分表现差异仍然无法解释。对金融知识表现差距的一种解释可能是,测试成绩的差异也可能是由测试工具本身引起的,因此,至少在一定程度上,这可能被解释为测试偏差。在本文中,我们提出了一个新开发的情境判断测试,其重点是财务能力。对于这个测试,我们检查组之间的差异是由于个体差异还是由于测试偏差。为了分析可能的测试偏差,我们测试了与日常资金管理相关的金融素养的一个方面(包括三个因素:控制个人财务状况、预算和处理资金),以衡量不同群体的不变性。如果可以假设测量不变性,我们通过计算t检验来分析组间差异。结果表明,测试的两个因素对所有考虑的群体(性别、移民和教育背景、学习机会)显示测量不变性。因此,组比较是可能的,潜在的差异不是由于测试偏差。对于一个因素,我们只能假设有/没有移民背景和有/没有学习金融主题机会的群体的测量不变性。当我们观察群体差异时,我们发现,与之前许多研究的结果相反,对平均差异的分析并没有显示出特定群体在金融素养方面存在任何系统性缺陷。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.40
自引率
7.70%
发文量
9
审稿时长
13 weeks
期刊介绍: The main focus of this journal is to provide a platform for original empirical investigations in the field of professional, vocational and technical education, comparing the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of different vocational education systems at the school, company and systemic level. The journal fills a gap in the existing literature focusing on empirically-oriented academic research and stimulating the interest in strengthening the vocational part of the educational system, both at the basic and higher education level.
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