How good are you with money? Take the test

Do you make financial decisions with your head or with your heart? This is what BBC Lab UK is trying to discover with an online mass experiment called the Big Money Test.

Launched in conjunction with the BBC's Watchdog series, the Test aims to be the biggest-ever UK study of how we deal with money.

It hopes to provide more evidence for the experts' view that our financial behaviour is governed as much by emotions and habits as by knowledge – and ultimately to lead to more effective ways of educating people in money management.

The Test is designed by the Open University Business School's Professor of Organisational Behaviour Mark Fenton-O'Creevy and Professor Adrian Furnham of University College London.

"Governments, companies and educators put a lot of work into providing people with the knowledge to help them with their financial affairs," says Professor Fenton-O'Creevy. "Unfortunately, for the most part these kinds of knowledge-based strategies have had limited success.

"There is some small-scale evidence that the way people manage their emotions has an important effect on the quality of their financial decisions.

"There is even some suggestion that this is just as true for finance professionals, such as traders in investment banks. But we need to do a large-scale survey to take a much closer look at these issues."