Abstract:

Background:
Parental education and parental socialization are important to develop children's financial skills and their attitudes towards indebtedness (Shim, Xiao, Barber, & Lyons, 2009; Shim, Barber, Card, Xiao, & Serido, 2010).

Aims:
To analyze the correlation between indebtedness attitudes and parental education and parental socialization.

Methods:
A cross-sectional design was developed based on an accidental sample of 1290 students aged between 16 and 43 years old. To collect the data, a questionnaire with sociodemographic, parental socialization, parental teaching and attitudes towards debt variables was used. To measure parental socialization and parental education, 8 variables advanced by Shim et al. (2010) and Shim et al. (2009) were used. Finally, 12 variables, defined by Haultain et al. (2010), were used to evaluate students' attitudes towards indebtedness. All variables, except for sociodemographic variables, were classified in a Likert scale of 5 points (1-totally disagree to 5-totally agree). IBM SPSS 24.0 was used to compute
(1) relative and absolute frequencies for qualitative variables;
(2) measures of central tendency and dispersion for quantitative variables;
(3) the Spearman statistical test to correlate two variables;
(4) the Alfa Cronbach test to analyze the reliability and the internal consistency of the responses. A significance level of 5% was used.

Results:
The majority of the students was female, had Portuguese nationality, attended a university course, and lived in households of 3 or 4 people with a monthly income of up to 800 euros. The parents had educational qualifications at the level of the 3rd cycle or secondary education. The Cronbach alphas for parental socialization, parental teaching and students' attitudes towards indebtedness were 0.781, 0.818 and 0.7, respectively. The overall Cronbach Alfa was 0.833. The results showed statistically, significant, positive and weak correlations between student attitudes towards indebtedness and parental socialization (ρ=0.137; p=0.000) as well as between indebtedness and parental teaching (ρ=0.132; p=0.000).

Conclusion:
Parental financial behavior, as monthly expenditure monitoring, savings and investments, as well as dialogue with children about how to spend and save money seems to have a positive contribution to student attitudes towards indebtedness.

Financing:
European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 006971 (UID/SOC/04011)]; and national funds, through the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the project UID/SOC/04011/2013.

References:
[1] Haultain, S., Kemp, S., Chernyshenko, O. S. (2010). The structure of attitudes to student debt. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(3), 322-330.
[2] Norvilitis, J. M., MacLean, M. G. (2010). The role of parents in college students’ financial behaviors and attitudes. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31(1), 55-63.
[3] Shim, S., Barber, B. L., Card, N. A., Xiao, J. J., Serido, J. (2010). Financial socialization of firstyear college students: The roles of parents, work, and education. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39(12), 1457-1470.
[4] Shim, S., Xiao, J. J., Barber, B. L., Lyons, A. C. (2009). Pathways to life success: A conceptual model of financial well-being for young adults. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 708-723.

Keywords:

Indebtedness, Undergraduates students, Behaviors, Parental education, Parental socialization.