The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has transformed international research and policy debates on the assessment of adult skills. Although research using PIAAC data is accumulating, little is known about how these data are used and what…

The Australian Council for Educational Research's submission to the Australian Government Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training's Public Enquiry into Adult literacy and its importance highlights the importance of these skills to Australia's well-being and economy, and calls on the government to continue participation in an…

This paper reports on a pilot study that used eye tracking techniques to make detailed observations of item response processes in the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The lab-based study also recorded physiological responses using measures of pupil diameter and electrodermal activity. The study tested…

Mixed findings characterize the literature on skills and economic distributions within and across countries. The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) offers new, internationally comparable data on literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills that can be combined with wage information. This paper…

The OECD Survey of Adult Skills is the jewel in the crown of its Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). This paper argues that the findings and policy lessons from the project to date justify the high hopes which were placed in PIAAC when detailed planning for the project began in 2003. First, it presents a brief…

Computer-based assessment can provide new insights into behavioral processes of task completion that cannot be uncovered by paper-based instruments. Time presents a major characteristic of the task completion process. Psychologically, time on task has 2 different interpretations, suggesting opposing associations with task outcome: Spending more…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a multi-domain adult skills assessment with an extensive background questionnaire, in 2012. PIAAC is a global effort to understand how individuals' education, workplace experiences, and other…

This paper examines the performance of the eight major occupational categories across the four skill areas of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey. The results indicated that some 38-64% of employed Australians were below minimal competence (at Level 1 or Level 2) in one of the four skill areas of prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy…

This paper provides Appendix D, Standard Error tables, for the full report, entitled. "Literacy, Numeracy, and Problem Solving in Technology-Rich Environments among U.S. Adults: Results from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012. First Look. NCES 2014-008." The full report presents results of the Program…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a cyclical, large scale study of adult skills and life experience focusing on education and employment that was developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the United States, the study was conducted in 2011-12 with a…

How can teachers be helped, at relatively little expense, to improve their professional practice? This problem was addressed in "Improving Formative Assessment in Vocational Education and Adult Literacy, Language and Numeracy Programmes"--the IFA project. Adopting a specific problem-based methodology as part of an action research…

The "Comparative Indicators of Education" report series has been published on a biennial basis since it began in 2002, although this year's is the first to expand its focus to the G-20 countries, having previously been focused on the G-8 countries. "Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries:…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations in order to monitor how well prepared they are to meet the challenges of the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework for the assessment of numeracy developed for the OECD's…

Governments and other stakeholders have become increasingly interested in assessing the skills of their adult populations for the purposes of monitoring how well prepared they are for the challenges of the new information world. The current paper provides an overview of the conceptual framework developed for the assessment of problem solving in…