- Description of the programme
- The study
- What are the outcomes?
- Key findings
- Points to consider
Description of the programme
Financial Literacy Australia funded ‘Women Talk Money’, which is an online financial literacy resource that empowers women to make informed decisions and secure their financial futures. It aims to build women’s capacity to discuss finances in their relationships and know their rights.
The study
Women’s Information and Referral Exchange (WIRE) undertook this evaluation. It used qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the quality, reach and impact of the project. The report outlines the programme logic and evaluation framework with key evaluation questions, which are as follows:
- Was the process effective?
- Are the resources informed by previous WIRE research and other Prevention of Violence against Women research?
- Is the information and platform accessible and appropriate for the target audience?
- Who is accessing the resources? Are specific target groups being reached?
- Has there been behaviour change within the target groups?
The data sources include the project budget and timeline, the existing evidence base of resources, website analytics of online user behaviour and an online survey including open-ended qualitative question responses (90 respondents with 60 completing all survey questions forming the data set).
What are the outcomes?
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Financial behaviour: Women make financial changes .
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Financial capability (Connection): Increased access to appropriate resources and increase awareness of other resources.
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Financial capability (Mindset): Women equiped to have healthier conversations with their partners.
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Financial capability (Ability): Improved financial literacy and specifically the evaluation assessed increased understanding of money.
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Other: Development of a widely disseminated evidence-based resource.
Key findings
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Financial behaviour: 22% of survey respondents had made some kind of financial change following visiting the website and another 52% were planning on making a change in the future.
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Financial capability (Connection): 92% found the website useful with the three most relevant pages being: relationships and money, talking about money and common issues.
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Financial capability (Mindset): 10% of respondents had used strategies from the website in a discussion with their partner, while 45% were planning to do so in the future. 7% of respondents didn’t have a partner but had tried using the strategies with someone else.
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Financial capability (Ability): 82% of survey participants stated that they had a better understanding of money after using the website.
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Other:
- The website had 6,035 unique users between 6th July and 15th of October 2016.
- 84% of users were in Australia and the majority of users (51%) accessed the website on a mobile device, with 37% accessing the website from a desktop and 12% accessing it from a tablet.
- The majority (39.5%) of users came directly to the website with social media channels being the second largest source of users. Facebook was the largest referrer of all social media channels with 89% of users acquired by social media coming from Facebook.
- Paid advertising was the most effective method for increasing traffic to the website with campaigns on both Facebook and Google AdWords being successful. When paid advertising wasn’t running there were a dramatic decrease in visitors to the website.
Points to consider
Methodological limitations:
- A major limitation is the short timeframe between the project being launched and the evaluation being conducted. Due to this the evaluation focuses on the extent to which the project achieved the short-term outcomes.
- Measures of outcomes are limited e.g. there are no objective measures of the extent to which financial literacy or understanding improved and most measures related to behaviour change are intentions to make changes in the future rather than actual changes.
- The sample from the online survey is very low and therefore may not be representative of all women using the online resource.
Relevance:
- It could be of interest to those developing online resources, in particular the finding on the effectiveness of paid advertising in increasing traffic.
Generalisability/ transferability:
- The evaluation recommends that this approach could be used for other target groups on the issue of respectful financial relationships, such as LGBTQI community.
Full report
Women talk money – evaluation report
