Investment literacy, social influence and undergraduates’ readiness to invest: dataset from Malaysia

Since the launch of the InvestSmart™ initiative in 2014, the government agencies in Malaysia have been actively engaging community and university students via their outreach programs to promote investment literacy. Given this background, the state of the investment literacy of Malaysian undergraduates and their readiness to invest is intriguing. Therefore, this article offers a dataset of Malaysian undergraduates’ readiness to invest and the role that investment literacy and social influence play in their readiness to invest. Using a non-probability sampling technique, 500 undergraduate students in Malaysia were engaged to participate voluntarily in this survey. Descriptive statistics are presented in this paper. The dataset provides insights into the current state of investment literacy among Malaysian undergraduates, the sources of information on stock investment, and the readiness of these undergraduates to participate in the stock market.

Since the launch of the InvestSmart TM initiative in 2014, the government agencies in Malaysia have been actively engaging community and university students via their outreach programs to promote investment literacy. Given this background, the state of the investment literacy of Malaysian undergraduates and their readiness to invest is intriguing. Therefore, this article offers a dataset of Malaysian undergraduates' readiness to invest and the role that investment literacy and social influence play in their readiness to invest. Using a nonprobability sampling technique, 500 undergraduate students in Malaysia were engaged to participate voluntarily in this survey. Descriptive statistics are presented in this paper. The dataset provides insights into the current state of investment literacy among Malaysian undergraduates, the sources of information on stock investment, and the readiness of these undergraduates to participate in the stock market. ©

Value of the Data
• This dataset allows the analysis of the current state of investment literacy and readiness to participate in the stock market of a population of young adults in Malaysia (i.e. undergraduates in Malaysian universities). • The dataset will inform the implementation of the National Strategy for Financial Literacy 2019-2023. • Useful insights can be extracted from this dataset to assist finance or investment curriculum design at the university level. • Researchers may employ this dataset to empirically examine the association between investment literacy, social influence, demographic factors and undergraduates' readiness to invest.

Data Description
Since the official launch in 2014 of the nationwide investment-literacy campaign by Malaysia's capital market authority, the government agencies and professional bodies have been taking the initiative to engage the youth population, including university students, via their outreach programs. We provide a dataset describing investment literacy, sources of information and influence on stock investment, and readiness to participate in stock investment among Malaysian undergraduate students. Questionnaires were distributed online and through fieldwork. A total of 500 undergraduate students enrolled in private and public universities in Malaysia between December 2019 and April 2020 participated voluntarily in the survey.
The dataset has three major groups. Part A contains the demographic data of gender, race, area of study, parents' combined income and college/university zone. Part B contains investmentliteracy scores (gathered through 17 quiz-type questions in the questionnaire) that measure participants' financial knowledge about stocks, bonds, interest rates, and mutual funds. All responses to the questions in this section were rated with a score of one for a correct response and a score of zero for an incorrect response. Part C contains data on social influence, i.e. the sources of information and influence of stock investment. Part D contains data of the investment readiness index. The questionnaire is provided as a supplementary file. Table 1 presents the frequency distribution of our respondents across demographic background, specifically gender, race, area of study, and parents' combined income. Table 2 reports the frequency of participants' responses to investment-related questions. More than 50% of respondents correctly answered several questions about mutual funds and the risk-reward relationship in stock investing. Participants' knowledge of the function of the stock market and the effect of increasing interest rates on bonds is rather weak. Table 3 presents the participants' responses about the sources of information and sources of influence of their stock investments. Our data indicate that friends and the internet are important sources of information and influence for stock investment. Table 4 reports the mean and standard deviations for the investment readiness index across demographic factors. On average, the male respondents have a higher readiness index than the female respondents. Consistent with Khan et al. [3] , across ethnicity, Chinese respondents have a higher degree of investment readiness than other ethnicities. Students enrolled in mathematics and science degrees have the highest average investment readiness index, followed by students enrolled in business, economics, and management degrees. In addition, students from middle to upper middle income backgrounds have a higher average investment readiness index compared to those of other income groups.

Experimental Design, Materials and Methods
The primary data collection was performed through an online and field survey. Using a nonprobability sampling technique (snowball sampling), a total of 500 printed questionnaires was initially distributed to identified contacts of selected universities located in the central, east coast, and northern regions of Malaysian peninsular. The response rate was 49.4% or 247 completed questionnaires. For the online survey, we created the questionnaire using the Google Answered all 17 questions correctly 3 0.6 Table 3 Responses to sources of influence of stock investment (7 items). form. We contacted student representatives from universities outside regions which were not covered during field work. Using social media platform, we provided these students with a link to the online questionnaire and requested them to share the link to their fellow students at respective universities. Our questionnaire design follows previous studies. Specifically, 17 quiz-type investmentliteracy questions were adapted from Balloch et al. [1] and van Rooij et al. [6] . Items on sources of information about stock investment followed several studies, for example, Gerrans et al. [2] and Liang and Guo [4] . Our measure of readiness index was adapted from previous studies examining technology adoption readiness (e.g. [5] ). To construct the investment readiness index, we measured participants' readiness in terms of personal financial management, acquisition of knowledge and skill to invest in stocks, and their familiarity with trading platforms. An equally weighted index was then constructed from the participants' responses on five yes/no questions capturing their readiness to invest in stocks, with 0 being 'not ready at all' and 5 being 'most ready'.

Ethics Statement
The questionnaire used for this research was approved by the Human Ethics Committee of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Informed consent was obtained from all respondents before they participated the survey. Participants were informed that the survey was anonymous.

Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appear to influence the work reported in this paper. collection assistance by Mohd Izzamuddin Nadin, Eswaran Letchumaman and Muhammad Hafizuddin Muhammad Ali are also acknowledged.

Supplementary Materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2020.106700 .