What FLIQ™ Measures
The Financial Learning Intelligence Quotient (FLIQ) Score™ is a behavioral assessment instrument embedded in a 5-day simulation. It does not measure financial knowledge. It measures financial decision-making behavior — specifically, how a student responds to financial pressure, social influence, unexpected costs, and risk across five sequential scenarios.
The distinction is intentional. Research consistently shows that financial knowledge alone does not predict financial behavior. Adults with high financial literacy routinely make poor financial decisions under social pressure, emotional states, and time constraints. The FLIQ Score™ is designed to assess the behavioral dimensions that knowledge-based instruments miss.
What this is: A behavioral baseline. The FLIQ Score™ captures a student's natural decision-making tendencies before instruction — not what they know, but how they act when the stakes feel real and the clock is running.
The score ranges from 0 to 100 and is derived from four behavioral domains, each assessed across the simulation's five days. Students are not graded. There is no "correct" answer to any scenario. The instrument is designed to surface behavioral patterns, not rank students.
What This Draws From
The FLIQ™ framework is grounded in three converging bodies of behavioral and cognitive science research:
Important note: FLIQ™ draws from these established frameworks in its design logic. The instrument itself has not yet been through independent psychometric validation. See Section 07 for the current validation roadmap.
What Gets Measured and How
Each of the four FLIQ domains is assessed across the five-day simulation. No single day is solely responsible for any domain score. Behavioral patterns across the full week — not individual responses — determine the result.
How the Score Is Computed
Each domain is scored 0, 1, or 2 based on behavioral patterns across the simulation. Domain scores are summed to produce a raw score (0–8), which is then mapped to a normalized FLIQ Score™ (0–100) and a profile label.
Raw score: IC (0–2) + PO (0–2) + RA (0–2) + RB (0–2) = 0–8 points
Profile mapping: Raw scores map directly to one of nine profile labels
(Financial Starter through Exceptional), each anchored to a behavioral description rather
than a percentile rank. The table below shows the current mapping.
Note on normalization: The 0–100 FLIQ Score™ range is designed for
intuitive readability in facilitator reporting. The specific normalization parameters
are being evaluated against pilot cohort data and are subject to revision as the
validation dataset grows.
| Profile Label | Raw Score | Behavioral Description |
|---|---|---|
| Financial Starter | 0 | Behavioral patterns are still forming. First-session scores here are developmentally appropriate and expected. |
| Emerging | 1 | Early awareness present. Impulse patterns are visible, particularly in social pressure scenarios. |
| Explorer | 2 | Building awareness. Student recognizes patterns in retrospect — the next development step is catching them in the moment. |
| Developing | 3 | Solid behavioral foundation. More intentional choices with increasing consistency across the week. |
| Builder | 4 | Deliberate, risk-calibrated decision-making. Balances risk, patience, and recovery well. |
| Thinker | 5 | Makes intentional, context-aware financial decisions. Requires consistent deliberate behavior across all five scenarios. |
| Advancing | 6 | High-signal behavioral profile. Applies context, reads risk, and recovers from pressure with discipline. |
| Leading | 7 | Elite behavioral patterns. Processed scenarios systematically and executed with discipline across the full week. |
| Exceptional | 8 | Exceptional across all four domains. Flagged every behavioral trap and finished stronger than started. |
Domain scores are computed from a weighted analysis of option types selected across the week. The simulation tracks each choice's behavioral category (e.g., spend_nonessential, decline_social, negotiate_payment, invest) and maps these to domain scoring rubrics in combination with balance position, prior-day spending patterns, and time-to-decision data.
Why Two Scenarios Have a Countdown
Days 2 and 4 of the simulation introduce a 20-second countdown timer. This is not a game mechanic — it is a methodological decision rooted in behavioral economics research.
Untimed multiple-choice assessments engage deliberate reasoning (System 2). Real financial decisions — particularly those involving social pressure or perceived opportunity — occur under time pressure, emotional activation, and incomplete information. The countdown is designed to replicate the actual conditions under which impulse control failures occur.
What gets recorded on timed days: choice made, option type, time to decision (ms), timer expired (true/false), balance at time of decision, prior impulsive choice count. This produces a richer behavioral signature than any single-choice response.
What Each Profile Means for Facilitators
Profile labels are designed as facilitation entry points, not permanent characterizations. The goal is to give educators a behaviorally grounded starting point for conversation — not to classify students.
The nine labels form a behavioral spectrum anchored by four observable tendencies: how quickly a student acts, how much they weigh consequences, how they respond to social pressure, and whether they recover after a setback. The facilitator class report surfaces each student's domain breakdown — which of the four dimensions drove their profile — giving educators a specific starting point for follow-up discussion rather than a single summary number.
First-session baseline note: The FLIQ Score™ is explicitly designed as a baseline instrument. A student scoring Financial Starter or Emerging on their first session is not being diagnosed. They are establishing a behavioral starting point against which future sessions can be compared. The diagnostic value of the instrument increases with repeated measurement over time.
What's Established and What Isn't
We are committed to transparency about the current validation state of FLIQ™. The instrument is in active field use and the data generated from pilot deployments is being used to build toward formal psychometric validation.
- Grounded in peer-reviewed behavioral economics frameworks
- Age-appropriate scenario design (piloted with ages 10–18 across two schools)
- Four-domain structure aligns with self-regulation research literature
- Timed mechanic design supported by dual-process theory
- COPPA/FERPA/SOPIPA compliant — zero PII collected
- Sequential scenario structure observes pattern consistency
- Independent psychometric validation study
- Test-retest reliability across repeated sessions
- Correlation with external behavioral outcomes
- Inter-rater equivalence for domain scoring rubrics
- Norm-referenced scoring by age band and demographic
- Longitudinal predictive validity (behavior → outcome)
The current scoring algorithm was designed with internal consistency as the primary goal: domain scores should reflect behavioral patterns that are logically and theoretically coherent, even before external validation is complete. This is the standard approach for early-stage behavioral instruments deployed alongside curriculum in educational settings.
Institutions that partner with WealthWise Kids™ contribute anonymized cohort data to the validation dataset. The long-term goal is a normed, externally validated behavioral assessment instrument — FLIQ™ — backed by the largest dataset of adolescent financial decision behavior in a controlled simulation environment.
What Data the Simulation Collects
The $100 Week™ simulation is designed from the ground up for deployment in educational settings with minors. It collects no personally identifiable information of any kind.