A practical evaluation of an adult financial literacy programme

This paper reports on an evaluation of Money Minded, which is an adult financial literacy programme developed by the ANZ Bank. The evaluation is with respect to the satisfaction of workshop participants with the MoneyMinded programme. While an evaluation had already been conducted by Russell, Brooks and Nair (2005) using a cross-section of the general population, the current study was undertaken with staff of five not-for-profit organisations. The rationale for the presentation of Money Minded to NFP staff is that it would equip them to provide financial literacy education to their clients. Hence, the evaluation reported in this paper is unique because it is concerned with an evaluation of a financial literacy programme from the point of view of prospective facilitators, not end-users, of the programme. Three null hypotheses were tested to determine: whether the programme was perceived to have provided a benefit to participants, whether participants considered the topics of the programme to be satisfactory, and whether participants were satisfied with the programme. The first and second null hypotheses were tested using percentages of the responses. The third null hypothesis was tested using a discriminant analysis model to distinguish between those workshop participants who were satisfied with the Money Minded programme and those who were not. Predictor variables in the model that were significant are 'the presenter' and 'main language used by the participant'. An older male presenter compared with a middle-aged female presenter, and a language (on the part of workshop participants) other than English, resulted in the highest level of dissatisfaction with the programme.