Comparative Analysis of Financial Education – Christiana Foufas
The research study Who Wants to be a Millionaire?: A Comparative Analysis of Financial Education on Long Island, New York and in the US, by Christiana Foufas, focuses on financial education in Long Island public high schools. Long Island is in New York, a state that does not have a financial education course requirement for students to graduate high school. The study utilized a quantitative method design through a test administered to three large Long Island public high schools. Participants were self-selected and all participation was voluntary. The test used was adapted and abridged from the National Financial Educators Council’s subtests, the Financial Foundation Decisions Test and the Student Loan Knowledge Test, and permission to use these tests had been obtained prior to their use in this research.
The research found through comparing the accuracy of the Long Island student responses to the national accuracy rate on these questions that Long Island high school students scored lower than the national results by an average of 20.26%. This was found to be statistically significant by way of a T-Test. Long Island high school students scored an average of 45.10% correct, whereas at the time the test was closed students nationally scored an average of 67.36% correct.
Although this is a correlational study and thus cannot prove causation, it does indicate a statistically significant difference between Long Island high school students in NY, a state with no standalone financial education course requirement, and their peers across the US, which could be due to the policy of not mandating students to take a standalone financial course. Foufas concluded that Long Island high school students were shown to have less financial knowledge than their peers nationally, which poses implications to state governments deciding on new educational requirements for high school students. Such research highlights the need for financial education across the nation, especially in places with no policy mandating such a course to be taken by high school students.
About Christiana Foufas
Christiana Foufas is a high school senior in the class of 2024 and lives on Long Island, New York. She loves research and in her junior year of high school completed a research paper entitled Who Wants to be a Millionaire?: A Comparative Analysis of Financial Education on Long Island, New York and in the US. She explored financial knowledge at the high school level under the AP Capstone Research Program. This project received a score of a 5 by the College Board, which is the highest score achievable. With this, she will be receiving the AP Capstone Diploma for her work.
