PIAAC-L data collection 2014: technical report; follow-up to PIAAC Germany 2012

The international PIAAC survey (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) is part of a large-scale undertaking of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) to assess and monitor key adult competencies and hereby inform policy decisions. Countries participating in the first cycle of PIAAC conduct a large-scale assessment of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments1 together with the administration of a background questionnaire. This questionnaire covers numerous antecedents of skills as well as economic and social outcomes. National Project Managements for PIAAC are required to adhere to a strict and elaborate set of standards and guidelines in order to ensure a high quality of data and the comparability of the results. The 24 countries participating in the first round of PIAAC (including Germany) carried out their data collection in 2011/2012 (referred to as PIAAC 2012).2 The international results were made public in October 2013 (OECD, 2013; Rammstedt, 2013) and were taken up by a wide audience. The international Public Use Files are available at the OECD website

Literacy and numeracy skills and labour market outcomes in Australia

Australian adults are above the OECD average in literacy but only average in numeracy, according to a staff paper released by the Productivity Commission. The paper analyses the profile of adult literacy and numeracy skills in Australia, and how important those skills are for labour market outcomes. Key points: Adult literacy and numeracy skills contribute to wellbeing in many ways. At an individual level, they are central to social and economic participation. Literacy and numeracy skills are a core part of a person\u27s human capital. They also support the development of other forms of human capital, including knowledge, other skills and health. Some Australians have low (level 1 or below) literacy and numeracy skills. In 2011–12: 14 per cent of Australians could, at best, read only relatively short texts from which they were able to locate only a single piece of information. 22 per cent could only carry out one-step or simple processes such as counting where the mathematical content is explicit with little or no text or distractors. At the other end of the skill distribution, 16 per cent of Australians had high (level 4/5) literacy skills and 12 per cent had high numeracy skills in 2011–12. People with high literacy skills can make complex inferences and evaluate subtle truth claims or arguments in lengthy or multiple texts. People with high numeracy skills can understand a broad range of mathematical information that may be complex, abstract or embedded in unfamiliar contexts. Most Australians have skills somewhere between these levels. Groups with relatively low literacy and numeracy skills include: people with low levels of education; older persons; people not working; and immigrants with a non-English speaking background. Compared with other countries in the OECD, Australia performs above average on literacy but average in numeracy. Higher literacy and numeracy skills are associated with better labour market outcomes (employment and wages). Econometric modelling shows that: an increase in literacy and numeracy by one skill level is associated with an increased likelihood of employment of 2.4 and 4.3 percentage points for men and women, respectively an increase in literacy and numeracy skills is associated with a similar increase in the probability of employment, whether a person had a degree, diploma/certificate or Year 12 education an increase in literacy and numeracy by one skill level is associated with about a 10 per cent increase in wages for both men and women. This positive association is equivalent to that of increasing educational attainment from Year 11 to Year 12 or to a diploma/certificate up to 40 per cent of the association between education and employment is attributable to literacy and numeracy skills. These results are consistent with education providing many other attributes of human capital that are valued in the workplace more than half of the \u27penalty\u27 that affects the wages of people with a non-English speaking background is explained by their lower literacy and numeracy skills. • Staff working papers are not formal publications of the Commission. They have been prepared and are authored by individual staff to advance understanding of issues on the Commission’s supporting research program

Adult Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills: An Overview of Existing PIAAC Data

As of summer 2019, more than 60 PIAAC datasets from participating countries worldwide were available for research purposes. These datasets can be differentiated, for example, in terms of their accessibility, the extent of the information provided, the population group in focus, and the design of the underlying study. PIAAC Public Use Files, for instance, are freely available and are therefore highly anonymised, whereas PIAAC Scientific Use Files are available only for scientific research purposes and provide access to more detailed variables. The majority of the PIAAC data are available as public use files, but some participating countries (e.g. Germany and the United States) have also made several scientific use files or other extended file versions available to the research community. Some of the available PIAAC datasets focus on specific population groups - for example, the incarcerated adult population in the United States. Regarding the design of the underlying studies, most available datasets are cross-sectional, but some longitudinal data already exist (e.g. PIAAC-L in Germany). The present chapter provides an overview of the structure, accessibility, and use of the PIAAC datasets available worldwide

Adults’ Readiness to Learn and Skill Acquisition and Use: An Analysis of PIAAC

This study examined the relationship between adults’ readiness to learn (RtL) and skill acquisition and use in the US sample of the PIAAC. RtL showed significant effects on each of the observed skill use outcomes. It was the strongest predictor of reading and writing skill use at home

Design and Key Features of the PIAAC Survey of Adults

This chapter gives an overview of the most important features of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey as it pertains to two main goals. First, only a well-designed survey will lead to accurate and comparable test scores across different countries and languages both within and across assessment cycles. Second, only an understanding of its complex survey design will lead to proper use of the PIAAC data in secondary analyses and meaningful interpretation of results by psychometricians, data analysts, scientists, and policymakers. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the PIAAC survey followed by an overview of the background questionnaire and the cognitive measures. The cognitive measures are then compared to what was assessed in previous international adult surveys. Key features of the assessment design are discussed followed by a section describing what could be done to improve future PIAAC cycles

PIAAC-L data collection 2016: technical report

This paper is part of a series of reports describing the technical implementation of PIAAC-L, the German PIAAC-Longitudinal project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is a follow-up to the technical reports for wave 1 (Zabal, Martin, & Rammstedt, 2016) and wave 2 (Zabal, Martin, & Rammstedt, 2017) and aims to describe the design, instruments, fieldwork processes, and data dissemination for wave 3