Background: Assessing individuals' financial literacy levels is currently widely recognized as being necessary to design effective financial education programs and also to evaluate their actual impact. To address the lack of a consensus regarding an appropriate instrument to measure financial literacy, the OECD and its International Network on Financial Education (INFE) developed a core questionnaire in 2011, to be administered across a wide range of countries. Italy participated in the study with a survey promoted by the financial consortium ABI-PattiChiari. A tailored version of the OECD/INFE questionnaire was used in the survey, with three indicators of financial literacy taken from the OECD survey (financial behavior index, financial attitude index, financial knowledge index) and two new indicators (financial familiarity index and financial planning). Purpose: The present paper focuses on data analysis methods used to evaluate financial literacy among the Italian adult population. It reviews data analysis approaches used to evaluate financial literacy and proposes a new method to gauge this latent construct in order to obtain a valid and reliable index that is able to capture educational needs in a manner that is as accurate and targeted as possible. Methods: The sample used for the survey consisted of 1247 Italian residents of at least 18 years of age who were reached via CATI. The sample was obtained by appropriate stratification across several dimensions (gender, age, geographical area, and municipality size). We propose alternative data analysis methods to treat the survey data: item response theory (IRT) and classification and regression tree analysis. Results: The analysis highlighted the crucial role that data analysis methods play in assessing financial literacy. Comparing the results for classical test theory and IRT, this paper suggests that financial literacy research should be open to alternative and multiple approaches to obtain reliable measures of financial literacy that are able to capture the educational needs of different population groups and can help to design effective financial education programs.

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Explores the attitudes of Italian children to money, with reference to US research which indicates a significant difference between boys and girls. Tests five hypotheses relating to gender differences in respect to money: boys are more positive in their attitudes to it, girls would be uncomfortable talking about it, men rather than women are seen by children as economically successful, sons rather than daughters would try to emulate their fathers’ economic status, and these gender differences might increase through adolescence. Explains the methodology of the study, and relates the findings to Italian society and the Catholic religion. Contrasts the attitudes of Italian parents to boys and girls regarding money: boys are more likely to receive regular pocket money and be expected to achieve highly paid jobs, whereas girls tend to value family or more creative activities.