Construct validity with structural equation modelling

Abstract

In 2012, an additional assessment of financial literacy took place within PISA, which gained increased research and media attention. Germany and some other countries, however, did not participate in the assessment of financial literacy. When asked, the project coordinators in Germany mentioned doubts with regard to the preliminaries and the construct validity that were published in the Financial Literacy Framework of OECD. Especially the similarity of financial literacy with other domains assessed in the PISA study, such as mathematics or reading comprehension tasks is a problem (OECD 2013a, 144). FILS is a computer-based study designed for 15-16 year old students from German general schools. The concept of FILS is using clearly defined content areas of financial literacy that were previously identified. The content areas refer to aspects from the students' direct environment. The chapter shows that the theory-driven structure and the content-specific assessment are elementary to studies on financial literacy, especially in the discussion of PISA and the additional financial literacy assessment. Therefore, we discuss the content validity of items in FILS compared to the results of PISA financial literacy.