Questionnaire Construct Validation in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study

International studies tend to use student, teacher or school questionnaires for the collection of contextual data on student or teacher characteristics, background, activities and the school\u27s learning environment. Furthermore, student measures of values, attitudes and behavioural intentions are also frequently viewed as important learning outcomes, in particular in the context of studies of civic and citizenship education. Data obtained from these instruments become frequently important predictors of student performance or are treated as learning outcome variables of interest. Therefore, the scaling of questionnaire items to obtain measures of students\u27, teachers\u27 and principals\u27 perceptions and attitudes should ideally be subject of a thorough cross-country validation of the underlying constructs. However, whereas international studies use to spend considerable efforts on ensuring measurement equivalence for international test instruments, the issue of equivalency of questionnaire data does not always receive quite the same attention. Using a set of student questionnaire items as an example, this paper describes how measurement equivalence was reviewed in the field trial analysis for the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) using different methodological approaches including factor analysis and item response modelling

Students\u27 participation in and valuing of civic engagement at school

The IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study studied the ways in which young people in lower secondary schools are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a wide range of countries including Europe, Latin America, and the Asian-Pacific region. ICCS was the third IEA study designed to measure contexts and outcomes of civic and citizenship education and was linked to the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED). A central aspect of the study was the assessment of student knowledge about a wide range of civic-related issues. ICCS gathered data from more than 140,000 Grade 8 (or equivalent) students in more than 5,300 schools from 38 countries. These student data were augmented by data from more than 62,000 teachers in those schools and by contextual data collected from school principals and the study’s national research centres. This paper uses data from ICCS 2009 to describe the level of reported student participation at school across participating countries as well as their perceptions of how valuable it is to become active at school. The paper also analyses which student and school level factors are associated with student participation at school and the extent to which they value these activities. In addition, using a path modelling approach, the paper reviews how indicators related to student participation at school are related to other outcomes like civic knowledge, citizenship self-efficacy and expected civic participation in the future

National Assessment Program : civics and citizenship : Year 6 and Year 10 : technical report : 2007

This report describes the technical aspects of the National Civics and Citizenship Sample Assessment of 2007 that was conducted in Australian schools, and summarises the main activities involved in the data collection, the data collection instruments and the analysis and reporting of the data. Chapter 2 summarises the development of the assessment domain and describes the process of item development and construction of the instruments. Chapter 3 reviews the sample design and describes the sampling process. Chapter 3 also describes the weighting procedures that were implemented to derive population estimates. Chapter 4 summarises the field administration and data management procedures, including quality control and the cleaning and coding of the data. Chapter 5 describes the scaling procedures, including equating, item calibration, the creation of plausible values and the standardisation of student scores. Chapter 6 examines the process of standards-setting and creation of Proficiency Levels used to describe student achievement. Chapter 7 discusses the reporting of student results, including the procedures used to estimate sampling and measurement variance, and the calculation of the equating errors used in tests of significance for differences across cycles

ICCS 2009 Asian report : civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower-secondary students in five Asian countries

This report describes results from the Asian regional module of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS). The five countries from the Asian region that participated in the international study—Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand—also participated in the Asian regional module. Each of these countries is located in either eastern or southeastern Asia. The report focuses on aspects of particular relevance for this geographic region, and should be viewed as part of the broader set of publications from ICCS. ICCS investigates the ways in which countries prepare their young people to undertake their roles as citizens. It studies student knowledge and understanding of civics and citizenship as well as student attitudes, perceptions, and activities related to civics and citizenship. It also examines differences among countries in relation to these outcomes of civic and citizenship education, and it explores how differences among countries relate to student characteristics, school and community contexts, and national characteristics

International Computer and Information Literacy Study: Assessment Framework

The purpose of the International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2013 (ICILS 2013) is to investigate, in a range of countries, the ways in which young people are developing computer and information literacy (CIL) to support their capacity to participate in the digital age. To achieve this aim, the study will assess student achievement through an authentic computer-based assessment of CIL administered to students in their eighth year of schooling. It will also collect and report on analyses of data about student use of computers and other digital devices as well as students’ attitudes toward the use of computers and other digital tools. The purpose of is publication is to articulate the basic structure of the study. It provides a description of the field and the constructs to be measured. It also outlines the design and content of the measurement instruments, sets down the rationale for those designs, and describes how measures generated by those instruments relate to the constructs. In addition, it hypothesizes relations between constructs so as to provide the foundation for some of the analyses that follow. Above all, the framework links ICILS to other work in the field. The contents of this assessment framework combine theory and practice in an explication of “both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’” (Jago, 2009, p. 1) of ICILS

Comparative studies on the souring process of milk by means of enzymatic and electrochemical sensors

In recent years, the demand for quick and specific analytical tools for food analysis has increased and is still expanding. Both the industry and government health agencies require a variety of different ana-lytical methods in the quality assurance of food materials. Analysis is needed for monitoring nutritional parameters, food additives, food contaminants, microbial counts, shelf life assessment and other olfac-tory characteristics like smell and odour. Enzymatic and electrochemical sensors are of great impor-tance in food analytics. Especially in dairy farming they are widely used for the quality control of prod-ucts as well as for monitoring and optimising of production processes, whereby as most interesting pa-rameters the pH value, the chloride and lactate concentrations and the conductivity are determined. Furthermore, electrochemical measuring procedures can be helpful for the health care of animals. Thus, e.g. pathogens in the cow's udder can be detected in a simple procedure by conductivity meas-urement. The aim of the paper presented here is to give a short survey on possibilities of application of biosensors and electrochemical sensors and measuring methods in dairy farming

Young People's Views of Government, Peaceful Coexistence, and Diversity in Five Latin American Countries

This open access report presents findings from the five Latin American countries that participated in the second cycle of the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2016). ICCS 2016 investigated the ways in which a range of countries are preparing their young people to undertake their roles as citizens during the second decade of the 21st century. The study also responded to new challenges in civic and citizenship education, and its findings allow robust comparisons of lower-secondary students’ attitudes to and perceptions of a wide range of aspects related to civics and citizenship. The results presented in this report come mainly from data collected via a regional Latin American student questionnaire. The findings provide insights into Latin American lower-secondary students’ thoughts on government practices (e.g., corruption and authoritarian government), their attitudes toward peaceful coexistence (e.g., use of violence, disobedience to the law, empathy), and their perceptions of diversity in society (e.g., tolerance of and discrimination against minorities and homosexuals). Four of the five participating Latin American countries also participated in the previous cycle of this study (ICCS 2009), making it possible to explore changes in young people’s civic-related perceptions and attitudes between 2009 and 2016. Data from the international part of the study (test and questionnaire) were used to review the extent to which region-specific perceptions relate to other factors such as students’ level of civic knowledge and students’ socioeconomic and educational contexts

ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary school students in thirty-eight countries.

The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) studied the ways in which countries prepare their young people to undertake their roles as citizens. ICCS was based on the premise that preparing students for citizenship roles involves helping them develop relevant knowledge and understanding and form positive attitudes toward being a citizen and participating in activities related to civic and citizenship education. These notions were elaborated in the ICCS framework, which was the first publication to emerge from ICCS (Schulz, Fraillon, Ainley, Losito, & Kerr, 2008)