Financial literacy and family communication patterns

Financial literacy has been shown to affect a wide range of financial behavior; therefore, understanding methods to improve financial literacy is vital for improving financial outcomes in personal finance. However, efforts to increase financial literacy through education have exhibited mixed results, which suggests that additional factors merit exploration for their impact on financial literacy. This study hypothesizes that family communication patterns will be related to financial knowledge, specifically that college students from a conversation-oriented family will perform better on a quiz of financial knowledge than those from a conformity-oriented family. This cross-disciplinary work emphasizes the relationship between financial literacy and communication studies. The research is conducted through an online survey administered to a volunteer sample of college students. Results suggest that conversations within the family regarding financial matters provide important knowledge regarding financial matters and may be a factor to consider in designing any financial literacy program.