Financial Management Education Needed by Extension Staff

Managing monetary resources affects everyone and is nearly always a concern for individuals and families of every income level. Extension educators recognized this concern as early as the 1950s1 and continue to emphasize this perennial problem area for their audiences.

If Extension educators are to effectively help families and individuals make sound decisions about their personal finances, they must have the needed experiences and education. Our study was designed to determine the financial management inservice education needs of Extension home economists. Seven areas were investigated: budgeting, consumer financial services, consumer credit, risk management, retirement, estate planning, and investments.

We developed a mail questionnaire. Content validity was established by a panel of six experts who have resident instruction and/or Extension responsibilities in financial management. In addition, two home economics district specialists and an Extension evaluation specialist reviewed the instrument. After field testing, the instrument was mailed to 68 home economics Extension agents in a midwestern state. They were asked to rate their perceptions of competencies as follows: (1) the importance of the competencies to their current position responsibilities, (2) their knowledge of the competencies, and (3) their ability to teach the competencies. All of the scales had acceptable reliability. The return rate was 93%.

Workshops and inservice education were the routes used by most agents to obtain information on financial management. Survey results indicated that agents perceived themselves to be most capable of delivering programs in budgeting, followed by consumer financial services, consumer credit, investments, risk management, estate planning, and retirement.

Based on the study's findings, future financial management inservice education for Extension staff should focus on risk management, retirement, and estate planning. While these areas were the three top priority areas for inservice education, this doesn't mean the remaining areas weren't important or that some agents wouldn't benefit from inservice in these areas.

1. B. E. Kearl and O. B. Copeland, eds., A Guide to Extension Programs for the Future (Raleigh, North Carolina: Extension Committee on Organization and Policy and the North Carolina State College, 1959).