1. OECD/INFE toolkit to measure financial literacy and inclusion
Adele Atkinson, PhD
OECD
With the support of the Russian/World Bank/OECD Trust Fund

2. Outline and overview of toolkit
Toolkit development
Outcomes
Future plans
Overview
Set of good practice questions
Supplementary question set
Guidance on undertaking a
survey

3. Questionnaire development process
OECD/INFE definition: “A combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behaviour necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial wellbeing”
Survey of INFE members: identify questions, survey approaches, analysis methods
Develop, discuss and refine a set of core questions
Undertake a large- scale exercise to measure financial literacy
Finalise the questionnaire and make available for widespread use
Review of available national surveys to identify typical content, suitable questions & appropriate method for data collection and analysis
Consultation with experts and country representatives to choose the most important questions and the best combination of questions
Creation and fine-tuning of questionnaire
Invitation to INFE members to pilot: accepted by 14
Creation of a master dataset and preliminary analysis in order to develop scoring
Detailed analysis and reporting; finalising
2008/ / /12

4. Existing surveys were scrutinised to identify good-practices and common themes & approaches
A range of national surveys on related topics were examined from around the world- including surveys from Australia, Austria, Canada, Iceland, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore , the UK and USA.

5. A questionnaire has been developed based on existing approaches and good-practice questions
Behaviour
Keeping track of money
Making ends meet
Choosing and using products
Short and long term planning
Knowledge
Simple and compound interest
Inflation- time value of money
Risk and return
Risk diversification
Attitudes
Propensity to save vs spend
Time preference (present vs future)
Risk preference (explanatory variable)
Financial inclusion
Awareness of products
Holding and using products
Product choice
Socio-demographic information
Age
Gender
Education
Work
Income
Attitude example
I find it more satisfying to spend money than to save it for the long term
Money is there to be spent
I tend to live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself
I am prepared to risk some of my own money when saving or making and investment
“A combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behaviour necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve individual financial wellbeing”

6. Why aren’t these in the main questionnaire?
Additional questions
A set of supplementary questions has also been developed to enable countries to undertake further exploratory study to inform their financial education initiatives or National Strategies.
Why aren’t these in the main questionnaire?
The core questionnaire is purposely short and focused
The core questionnaire uses questions that can differentiate between levels of financial literacy
Some questions are not applicable across all sectors of the population, or all countries
What do they cover?
A wide range of topics e.g.
knowledge related to particular products
Certain behaviours, such as taking advice or making complaints (consumer protection related issues)
Use and impact of credit
Understanding risk

7. A common method of data collection
Core questions to be used as a set, or placed before other questions when combined
Careful translation to retain the meaning of questions
Target achieved sample of individuals aged 18+ (aiming for at least a 60% response rate)
Weighted data to reflect gender/ age distribution
Personal interviews so that respondent’s literacy levels are irrelevant
Additional guidance available in toolkit
Data to be collected by professional survey organisations in each country using a robust method to maximise comparability

8. International measurement exercise
14 countries drawn from 4 continents agreed to use the core questionnaire developed by the OECD/INFE and submit the data for analysis;
They included developed and emerging economies including middle (lower and upper), and high income economies
Armenia, Albania, BVI, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Malaysia, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, UK
Since the initial exercise a wide range of other countries have used the questionnaire, and Estonia and South Africa have repeated the measurement to track changes.

9. Outcomes
The measurement toolkit meets a need for simple instruments to collect comparable financial literacy data
The survey instrument is highly flexible and applicable across a wide range of countries
The core questionnaire is also applicable in a wide range of circumstances, across different socio-economic groups
The questions are flexible enough to be used alone, or combined with the supplementary questions or other surveys
The data can be used to create replicable measures of financial literacy that allow analysis within and across countries

10. Future plans Additional analysis and reporting
The OECD/INFE will continue to use the first dataset to inform the work of the network and related research.
Further data collection and sharing of toolkit
Repeat the measure; both with original 14 countries and others: this is already happening!
Collect translated questionnaires to share with other interested countries
Encourage all countries to incorporate the core questions in existing measurement exercises, and if possible, share the data with the OECD

11. Thank you Questions, comments, further information:
OECD/INFE
Russian Trust Fund