The measurement properties of the Basic Finance Test for children and the Test of Financial Knowledge for youth eBook

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The Basic Finance Test (BFT) and Test of Financial Knowledge (TFK) offer standardized measures of the understanding of personal finance concepts that experts think should be understood prior to attending a U.S. high school. The National Standards for Financial Literacy describes standards and benchmarks at the fourth-grade and also the eighth-grade levels that serve as the financial literacy content for each test. This study reports on the development of the test items, the relationships of the test items to the financial literacy standards, and how the items worked with a sample of 475 students from 15 U.S. elementary or middle schools. The test scores and item data are first analyzed from a classical test theory (CTT) perspective to provide evidence about the reliability and validity of each test. Further analysis is conducted with each test using item response theory (IRT). The test score results from the samples from each test suggest that the BFT and TFK offer teachers and researchers with valid, reliable, and useful instruments to measure understanding of personal finance before high school.