literature review

Running head: DIAGNOSTIC ESSAY 1

DIAGNOSTIC ESSAY 4

Diagnostic Essay: Analysis of the Article ‘Improving Financial Literacy in College of Business Students: Modernizing Delivery Tools’ by Kuntze, Wu, Wooldridge, and Whang (2019)

Bus 300GW: Business Communication for Professionals

Analysis of the Article ‘Improving Financial Literacy in College of Business Students: Modernizing Delivery Tools’ by Kuntze, Wu, Wooldridge, and Whang (2019).

One the problems affecting college students is their inability to make sound financial decisions or appropriate investments. This is occasioned by low financial literacy coupled with student loans and credit cards burden. Poor understanding of personal finance affects other areas in life such as their ability to pay for child support, retirement saving and money management in the business world. Heavy student debts are also heavily associated with their lack of financial literacy skills, which means that most fail to understand the amount they are borrowing and the different options available for them. As a result of such concerns, Kuntze, Wu, Wooldridge, and Whang (2019) and study to understand how financial literacy could be improved among college students.

In this study, 244 college students were evaluated to determine whether short video courses would help them improve their financial literacy. The researchers were more interested in those taking management and marketing majors, but the study findings could be duplicated to other students and non-students. They also chose students who were more conversant with YouTube videos as this was the most accessible method for millennials. Before the actual videos were released, different lecturers and researchers collaborated to make sure that the best tool was used for financial education before a study was conducted to indicate the effectiveness of the short video.

The location of the study was at a private southeast school where three business courses were selected for students to participate in the experiment. They were then supposed to watch a financial literacy video lecture during their own free time. However, only the experiment group could watch the video since half of the group acted as the control group.

Those who were to watch the video were given a duration of two-week just before their Spring break while the assessment of both groups was done right after the Spring break (Kuntze et al., 2019). The reason for the difference between the short video course and the actual study was to create an interval between viewing and measuring of the students’ financial literacy.

After the experiment, data was collected using questionnaires where students were asked questions concerning their personal financial decisions. The results were then analyzed using probability and a two-factor ANOVA statistical methods (Kuntze et al., 2019). After this, the researchers analyzed the results based on some factors such as the difference between the experiment and the control group in terms of their financial literacy. The results were also analyzed to identify other similarities and dissimilarities such as to gender, ethnicity and other differences in financial literacy.

From the results, it was found out that the video treatment provided some financial literacy skills as students who took the course performed better than those who did not. It was also found that women performed much lower than men thus confirming similar previous findings (Kuntze et al., 2019). There were also some significant differences in various demographic groups as African Americans were found to score lower than others. College business majors were found to possess financial literacy thus alleviating earlier concerns and other studies’ findings that marketers are weak in all quantitative and numeracy areas.

This led the researchers to conclude that such a video would work well with those in non-financial majors and non-students based on the findings (Kuntze et al., 2019). The findings also stressed the importance of web-learning in teaching short financial literacy courses to students because of their easy availability and ability to be used as a reinforcement tool.

Reference

Kuntze, R., Wu, C. K., Wooldridge, B. R., & Whang, Y. O. (2019). Improving financial literacy in college of business students: modernizing delivery tools. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 37(4), 976-990.