Financial education plays an important role in guiding individuals to achieve their financial goals and contribute to the economic well being of society as a whole. Without a certain level of financial knowledge, consumers can have difficulty making wise decisions in today's complicated financial marketplace. This lack of financial knowledge underscores the need for educating people in basic financial issues so that they may make wise consumer decisions and become financially successful in society. For that reason, financial education is an important life skill for people at all socio-economic levels.

While financial education plays an important role in society, its contribution to the economy is yet to be recognized. The main reason for this situation is poor visibility of the impact of financial education programs. Research data shows that the impacts and results of financial education programs are not sufficiently evaluated. However, if such results were more widely tracked and disseminated, the outcome could be that the successful programs were taught more frequently and the less successful programs were either improved or discontinued.

The National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE®) recognized this deficiency and took the necessary steps to address it. This evaluation toolkit is the result of that action.

Importance of Program Evaluation

A financial education program without evaluation is somewhat similar to an explorer without a compass. Without a compass, an explorer will not be able to decide whether he or she is on the right track. Similar to this analogy, without an evaluation, the educator will not be able to decide whether the financial program he or she is teaching is moving in the right direction: producing successful results and meeting the needs of the audience.

Program evaluation is important due to two major tasks it can perform in the educational enterprise.

The first task of evaluation is to help educators decide whether the program is meeting needs and whether any improvements are required. By evaluating the program, the educator will be able to identify whether the desired outcomes of the program are being implemented as anticipated. If not, the educator can discover the program's barriers, weaknesses, strengths, and possible alternatives. A good evaluation provides input into these areas and helps educators make program improvement decisions.

The second task of evaluation is to help the educator document the outcome of financial education programs. This is essential for the accountability purpose of the funds utilized for financial education. By comparing outcome with the resources spent. Those who fund financial education programs will be able to more easily determine the value of the program. If there is no evaluation, outcomes of the program will not be documented and only those participants who derived benefits from the program will know their individual impact.

Financial educators that do not evaluate their programs miss a great opportunity to build public and private support for financial education programs that can improve the financial well-being of the public. If, instead, program evaluations and impacts are documented, funding agencies will be able to decide the worth of programs and allocate more funds for stronger educational programs.

Using the Financial Education Evaluation Toolkit

With its easy-to-use online database and companion manual (available in print or electronic formats), this toolkit has been especially designed to help financial educators understand evaluation concepts and apply them in educational program evaluation.

In addition, the toolkit provides assistance to financial educators who are seeking help to evaluate and document the impact of their educational programs. These findings can help educators refine and improve the programs they are teaching so that their students more easily learn the financial topics presented. More importantly, impact evaluation can help students adopt new and more effective financial behaviors that will benefit them in the future.

When using the online evaluation database, educators can easily access corresponding sections of the manual by clicking the "Help?" button in the upper right corner of the screen.

How to Use the Manual

This evaluation manual has been designed to be used with the evaluation database. The manual has five parts.

Part I provides an overview of financial education in general and the topics, components, and delivery methods that can make a financial education program most helpful to the audiences it serves. Part II discusses why program evaluation is important and provides common concepts and terms involved with evaluating financial education programs. Part III describes the evaluation planning process. Part IV takes educators step-by-step through the online evaluation database. Part V presents details on collecting, analyzing, summarizing, and using the resulting data from the evaluation to build and enhance strong financial education programs.

The evaluation database and the manual have been developed to complement each other when utilized for program evaluation. Table 1 summarizes the main objectives of each of the five parts of the evaluation manual:

Table 1. Objectives of the evaluation manual

Part	Objectives
I II III IV V	To help financial educators understand: Basic elements of effective financial education programs. The importance of program evaluation and common terms used. The evaluation planning process. How to use the database for designing evaluation instruments. How to collect, analyze, summarize and utilize evaluation data.