BackgroundAssessing individuals’ financial literacy levels is currently widely recognized as being necessary to design effective financial education programs and also to evaluate their actual impact. To address the lack of a consensus regarding an appropriate instrument to measure financial literacy, the OECD and its International Network on Financial Education (INFE) developed a core questionnaire in 2011, to be administered across a wide range of countries. Italy participated in the study with a survey promoted by the financial consortium ABI–PattiChiari. A tailored version of the OECD/INFE questionnaire was used in the survey, with three indicators of financial literacy taken from the OECD survey (financial behavior index, financial attitude index, financial knowledge index) and two new indicators (financial familiarity index and financial planning).PurposeThe present paper focuses on data analysis methods used to evaluate financial literacy among the Italian adult population. It reviews data analysis approaches used to evaluate financial literacy and proposes a new method to gauge this latent construct in order to obtain a valid and reliable index that is able to capture educational needs in a manner that is as accurate and targeted as possible.MethodsThe sample used for the survey consisted of 1247 Italian residents of at least 18 years of age who were reached via CATI. The sample was obtained by appropriate stratification across several dimensions (gender, age, geographical area, and municipality size). We propose alternative data analysis methods to treat the survey data: item response theory (IRT) and classification and regression tree analysis.ResultsThe analysis highlighted the crucial role that data analysis methods play in assessing financial literacy. Comparing the results for classical test theory and IRT, this paper suggests that financial literacy research should be open to alternative and multiple approaches to obtain reliable measures of financial literacy that are able to capture the educational needs of different population groups and can help to design effective financial education programs.

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评估金融知识水平的挑战：意大利背景下的替代数据分析方法

背景技术目前，评估个人的金融知识水平是设计有效的金融教育计划并评估其实际影响的必要条件。为了解决关于衡量金融知识水平的适当工具的共识，OECD及其国际金融教育网络（INFE）于2011年开发了一份核心问卷，将在许多国家/地区进行管理。意大利参与了这项研究，并由金融联合会ABI–PattiChiari发起了一项调查。该调查使用的是OECD / INFE问卷的量身定制版本，并从OECD调查中获得了三个金融知识指标（财务行为指数，财务态度指数，财务知识指数）和两个新指标（财务熟悉度指数和财务计划）。目的本文重点研究用于评估意大利成年人口财务知识的数据分析方法。它回顾了用于评估金融素养的数据分析方法，并提出了一种新的方法来评估这种潜在的构成，以便获得有效且可靠的指数，该指数能够以尽可能准确和针对性的方式满足教育需求。用于调查的对象包括通过CATI到达的1247名至少18岁的意大利居民。通过在多个维度（性别，年龄，地理区域和市政规模）上进行适当的分层，获得了样本。我们提出了替代数据分析方法来处理调查数据：结果响应分析强调了数据分析方法在评估金融素养中的关键作用。比较经典测试理论和IRT的结果，本文建议金融素养研究应向其他方法开放，以获取可靠的金融素养度量标准，这些方法应能够满足不同人群的教育需求，并有助于设计有效的方法。金融教育计划。