| Roundtable: Toward Improving the Evaluation Practice of Financial Education Programs: Key Issues and the Role of Formative Evaluation |
| Roundtable Presentation 833 to be held in SAN JACINTO on Saturday, Nov 13, 1:40 PM to 2:25 PM |
| Sponsored by the Assessment in Higher Education TIG |
| Presenter(s): |
| Nicole Jackson, University of California, Berkeley, jackson@berkeley.edu |
| Abstract: The melt-down of financial markets both in the U.S. and world-wide has called into the question not only the credibility of financial institutions, but also forms of accountability in financial education. Financial education evaluation has traditionally used more summative approaches in evaluating outcomes related to the learning of savings and investment behaviors, which span from high school to professional education programs, to address this accountability. These approaches have proven faulty in curtailing three general issues, which pervade financial education and the financial service industry more generally. These issues include forms of 1) overconfidence bias at the individual level, 2) forms of overconfidence bias reinforced at the group level, and 3) related issues of over-directed self-aggrandizement. This proposal investigates these three issues and proposes the need for more formative as opposed to summative approaches to improve the practice of financial education evaluation. |