Financial knowledge in university students: analysis by Item Response Theory

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Guilherme Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Arantes, Pedro Paulo Melo, Rogers, Pablo, Rogers, Dany
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Educação Matemática (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.revistasbemsp.com.br/index.php/REMat-SP/article/view/573
• topic: Financial Knowledge; Financial Literacy; Item Response Theory; Conocimiento Financiero; Educación Financiera; Teoría de la Respuesta al Ítem; Conhecimento Financeiro; Alfabetização Financeira; Teoria de Resposta ao Item

The recent democratization of credit has allowed the population to increase its consumption pattern, however, the level of financial knowledge has not kept up with this growth, which is a trigger for serious financial problems. The present study aimed to measure the level of financial knowledge in university students verifying if there is a difference between incoming students and graduates and in addition to analyze if there is any difference in the domain of the theme between several undergraduate courses such as engineering, business and humanities (i.e. among students of courses with different levels of mathematical education). For this a questionnaire was applied and refined using the Item Response Theory (IRT), validated by the Differential Item Functioning (DIF) test. The sample had 232 students and the results concluded that there is a difference in financial knowledge between the groups, being higher in students of the last year and in students of engineering and business courses, to those who have a less dense mathematical education, which may indicate that mathematics helps for better financial literacy of the individual. Additionally, differences in financial knowledge by gender, races/ethnicities, income and parental education were also found.