Money and Me Campaign Evaluation

• Description of the programme
• The study
• Key findings
• Points to consider

Description of the programme

‘Money and Me’ is a free multi-platform digital source of money management information provided for young people in Scotland (the target age range for the programme is not stated). It aims to contribute to the national goal set out in the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing for 150,000 more children in young people in Scotland to receive a meaningful financial education by 2030.

The version of the programme referred to here was delivered by Young Scot, with support from the Money and Pensions Service, as a campaign in continuation of a previous pathfinder campaign in 2020. The campaign involved four money-themes weeks run across 2021 and 2022, covering budgeting, saving, spending and taxes, topics which had been designed in collaboration with Young Scot volunteers. Resource content was shared via Young Scot’s website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Spotify in a form of quick and frequent ‘micro-interventions’ and integrated with offline support and links to reputable sources – which previous research has suggested is effective for delivery to young people. The campaign reached young people aged between 12 and 25.

The study

The evaluation approach used a mixture of reach metrics (i.e. administrative measures) and user surveys. A post-campaign survey was used to measure the short-term impacts of the campaign in the two weeks following it, returning between 28 (saving) and 182 responses (taxes) by topic. A follow-up survey was used to measure longer-term impacts a few weeks after the campaign ended and this received responses from 424 young people from across Scotland (this survey did not cover the taxes topic). The intention to use pre- and post-surveys to measure financial literacy outcomes was abandoned due to low rates of consent.

The study successfully measured several goals:

• To reach 850,000 young people with the campaign, 60% of whom say they will take positive action to manage their money and feel more informed financially.
• To engage 45,000 young people with the campaign, which includes digital clicks and shares.
• To achieve 3,000 webpage and article views, 60% of whom say the information is useful.

Key findings

• Reach: The campaign reached nearly 1.8 million digital accounts during the campaign period (exceeding the target of 850,000). Compared with targets of 60%, 56% of young people in the post-campaign survey and 70% in the follow-up survey said they will take positive action to manage their money and 58% of young people in the post-campaign survey said they feel more informed financially.
• Engagement: There were over 112,0000 engagements with the Money and Me content (exceeding the target of 45,000).
• Views: There were nearly 6,000 webpage and article views (exceeding the target of 3,000), with 91% of users reporting finding the information useful (exceeding the target of 60%).

Points to consider

• Methodological strengths/weaknesses: The few financial capability outcomes that were measured in the study rely on self-report, which might tend to over-state positive outcomes.
• Generalisability/transferability: Compared with the reach of the campaign and the resources, very few young people participated in the evaluation surveys, and these are likely to be highly self-selecting. Caution should be taken if wishing to generalise the findings beyond the sample without caution.
• Applicability: In so far as the project used an online and social-media campaign for providing money management information to young people, the study findings are likely to have broad applicability to contexts beyond Scotland and the UK.