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Economic literacy: a longitudinal study in Portuguese undergraduate students
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Abstract(s)
Economic literacy can be defined as the ability to use related knowledge and skills to manage financial sources effectively. Economic literacy is about knowing and applying the main economic theories in making rational economic decisions. Higher literacy levels on economy will lead to an increase in society´s and individuals´ economic efficiency and well-being.
The objectives of this study were to evaluate the impact of the General Principles of Economics (GPE) course on students' economic literacy and to identify subjects in which students show greater difficulty.
To collect the data, a questionnaire that included socioeconomic variables and the Economic Literacy Test (ELT) developed by the National Council of Economic Education (NCEE) was applied. The ELT includes twenty questions of multiple choice. There were four choices: a correct answer, two incorrect ones and a fourth choice for the students that did not knew the answer. Basically, the ELT is about basic economic concepts and allows to evaluate the literacy of students and adults in four topics, namely consumer economics; production economics; financial economics; government's economic role and international trade. The ELT was applied to all students that were enrolled in GPE, who were present in the first class, in September 2017. At the end of the semester (January 2018), the same questionnaire was applied. GPE is a course of the Languages for International Relations degree from a public higher education institution, located in the northern of Portugal. Of the 95 students enrolled in GPE, 70 completed the questionnaire at the beginning of the semester. Of these, only 45 answered the questionnaire at the end of the semester that corresponds to a response rate of 47.4%.
Data analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 25.0. Descriptive statistics was used to characterize the sample. In order to compare the students’ knowledge level on economics, pre and post-course, the Wilcoxon test was applied. For each question (correct and incorrect answer), the McNemar test was used to compare pre and post-course samples, considering each question, in order to verify if the course was responsible for the changes that occurred between the two moments. For both statistical tests, a significance level of 5% was used.
Students were, mainly, female (60%), with a mean age of 19.4 years old (SD = 1.63). Only 20.0% had previous training in economics during high school and 8.9% have already attended the GPE course in previous years without success. Most students came from rural areas (53.0%) and their parents were employed (father: 86.7%; mother: 73.3%), and the monthly income level was up to 1000 euros (59.1%). Most mothers had an educational level between 3rd cycle (33.3%) and high school (31.1%) while the fathers´ educational level ranged between 2nd and 3rd cycles with 24.4% and 33.3%, respectively. The knowledge level pre and post-course was, on average, 12.0 (SD = 2.55) and 12.9 (SD = 3.24) out of 20, respectively. There were no statistically significant differences in students' level of knowledge pre and post-course (p-value = 0.091).
Students proved to have a fair level of knowledge pre and post-course. At the end of the course, most students showed improvements in the literacy level on economy. However, the improvement was not statistically significant. So, in the future, in order to improve the economic literacy level, some topics must be emphasized by the teacher, namely, financial, consumer and producer economics.
Description
Keywords
Economic literacy test Knowledge level Students Higher Education General principles of Economics
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Ribeiro, Maria Isabel; Fernandes, António; Fernandes, António Pedro (2019). Economic literacy: a longitudinal study in Portuguese undergraduate students. In 12th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation ICERI2019. Seville. p. 5360- 5367. ISBN 978-84-09-14755-7
Publisher
IATED