The bold and the bankable: How the Nuestro Barrio Telenovela reaches Latino immigrants with financial education (Spader et al., 2009)

The study used a matched comparison group design to assess the impact of the Nuestro Barrio Telenovela. Study participants were Latino immigrant adults who resided in North Carolina. To be eligible to participate, individuals needed to be 18 or older, a primarily Spanish speaker, not a homeowner, and from a South American or Latin country. The authors recruited treatment participants at community events and venues and recruited the control group by phone. While the soap opera was broadcast on television, treatment participants in this study were provided with a DVD to watch on their own. The treatment group included 66 individuals who had received the DVD and watched the show at least once. The control group included 89 individuals who had not been given the DVD and confirmed that they did not watch the show. A phone survey was used to collect the data that included questions on financial knowledge that aligned with the topics covered in the soap opera. The financial knowledge measure included four true/false questions about homeownership and banking in the U.S. The authors used propensity score matching to create equivalent groups, matching on variables including gender, age, and whether participants were from Mexico. The authors then examined differences between the treatment and comparison groups in financial knowledge using statistical tests.