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Analysis of the BBC Big Money Test

Funded by: Friends Provident Foundation

Open University Business School contact: Professor Mark Fenton-O'Creevy

Background

Professor Mark Fenton-O'Creevy and Professor Adrian Furnham (University College London) are engaged in a collaboration with the BBC’s LabUK: The Big Money Test. The collaboration involved a call to action on the BBC consumer affairs programme Watchdog and on the BBC’s website, with audience members being encouraged to participate in an online questionnaire in exchange for personalised feedback on their results. The survey goes beyond financial capability approaches to the management of personal finance to examine individuals psychological and emotional relationships to their financial affairs. Additional resource for the project has been provided by the BBC.

Methods

  • Test the psychometric properties of key variables including money pathology, money beliefs, impulsivity, financial knowledge, financial capability, and financial distress
  • Test models of the relationships between demographic variables (including gender, age and social class) and these key variables.
  • Test models of relationships between, on the one hand, attitudes, beliefs, emotion regulation, coping strategies, knowledge and social support and, on the other hand, financial capability and measures of financial distress (including bankruptcy, repossession and denial of credit).
  • Examine the relationship between key life events (such as retirement, illness, birth of child, redundancy) and financial distress.
  • Test whether key variables moderate the relationship between life events and financial distress. For example, given an adverse life event do those with ‘better’ coping strategies suffer less financial distress.

Findings

The survey has produced a large and complex data set of 110,000 responses, and we anticipate the findings will have significant implications for policy. The results should help us understand how key measures might be used in profiling individuals to provide diagnostic feedback and to tailor learning and support both in learning programmes and at times of financial vulnerability.

Much current policy is directed at improving financial knowledge. The findings may have implications for redirecting some efforts to attitudes, emotions and social support. Since we expect significant variation in key variables by demographics such as gender, age, income and class, findings should have significant implications for appropriate targeting of policy interventions to particular social groups.

Research team

Links

Research centre: Responsibility and Regulation (R&R)