Journal of Personal Finance
©2011, IARFC. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
strong consensus can be determined. (See Appendix G for
more information on the calculation methodology and data.)
Combining Perceived “Need” and Literature Scan
Each category was assigned an Importance Weight based
on feedback from industry professionals as outlined above.
This was then combined with the volume of articles (as in
Appendix G) to arrive at an Importance Rank. In simple terms
we created a normal distribution of the number of articles per
topic and then rated the topic based on its percentile ranking in
the distribution.
In Table 6 we display the 10 topics that scored highest
using our methodology as requiring more research
concentration. They are listed by their importance rank. Estate
Distribution Analysis requires the most focus, followed by
Pension Alternatives and Tax Optimization. For the complete
list of topics that resulted in a net belief that additional research
was required, see Appendix H.1.
Table 6
Categories Requiring the Most Focus
Sub-Category
Importance
Weight
Articles
Importance
Rank
Estate Distribution Analysis 73.50 1 61.18
Pension Alternatives 86.70 13 57.65
Tax Optimization 72.35 7 54.72
Holistic Planning vs. Modular 55.15 0 46.51
Succession Planning 81.76 22 41.62
Debt Management 82.14 24 38.88
Non-traditional Families 47.09 6 36.27
Divorce Planning 53.83 14 34.90
Needs on Disability 39.76 3 32.17
Dependents with Special Needs 36.48 6 28.10