PIAAC - Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies

Project Structure

PIAAC is an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The decision-making committee for PIAAC is the Board of Participating Countries (BPC), consisting of representatives of the funding bodies of the participating countries. In the BPC, Germany is represented by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

International

An international consortium is responsible for the international project implementation. The international consortium for PIAAC consists of six organizations from four different countries. Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, USA, led by project director Dr. Irwin Kirsch, is responsible for the overall coordination of PIAAC. The consortium is responsible for the international study design, international project management, development of the survey instruments and software (cognitive assessment and background questionnaire), quality measures for all aspects of the study, monitoring of participating countries, international data management, data scaling and analysis.
This consortium is supported and advised by a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) which consists of internationally renowned researchers. The Technical Advisory Group advises the consortium on methodological matters such as survey design, achievement of international comparability, and data analysis options.
In addition, there is an expert group for each cognitive domain measured in PIAAC as well as for the background questionnaire (Subject Matter Expert Groups, SMEG). The expert groups support the consortium in the conceptual development and operationalization of the measurement constructs.

National

GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences was commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Research to carry out the national project implementation in Germany. At GESIS, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Beatrice Rammstedt and Dipl.-Psych. Anouk Zabal work on the PIAAC project. The German PIAAC team is supported by a Scientific Advisory Board. The Board advises the PIAAC team on important matters and decisions related to the national implementation of PIAAC. In addition, the German PIAAC team is advised by scientific experts from various content-related and methodological areas. These include internal experts at GESIS as well as external researchers.

The German National Project Managers, Prof. Dr. Beatrice Rammstedt and Dipl.-Psych. Anouk Zabal, lead a team of researchers at GESIS that are responsible for the implementation and analysis of the PIAAC study in Germany.

Administrative Assistance: Julia Khorshed and Maria Kreppe-Aygün

External Support for IT-Coordination: DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education

Within GESIS, PIAAC's National Project Management is advised by the following experts in various areas of responsibility:

Dr. Dorothée Behr is an expert in the translation of questionnaires and has been working at GESIS since 2006. As a member of the international PIAAC consortium, she was in charge of drafting the translation guidelines for the background questionnaire in both Cycle 1 and Cycle 2. She advises the project team on the translation of the survey instruments and is also involved in the translation processes herself.

Dipl.-Soz. Michael Blohm has many years of expertise in field monitoring, random sampling and nonresponse bias analyses and has been involved in the design, implementation (monitoring) and preparation of the ALLBUS surveys since 2000. He advises the project team on issues relating to fieldwork planning and implementation.

Dr. Christian Bruch has been a postdoctoral researcher in the Survey Statistics team since 2018. Previously, he worked at the German Internet Panel and the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research at the University of Mannheim. He advises the project team on sampling and contributes his expertise in the field of variance estimation and weighting.

Dr. Barbara Felderer is an expert on the quality of survey data, especially non-response and non-response bias, and survey statistics. She has headed the Survey Statistics team at GESIS since 2019. She advises the project team on non-response bias analyses.

Dipl.-Soz. Achim Koch is an expert in national and international population surveys, in particular on questions of planning and control of data collection as well as questions of sample quality. He advises the project team on the planning of fieldwork and the planning of specific measures to increase exploitation.

Dr. Clemens Lechner is head of the Scale Development and Documentation team and an expert in the measurement, modeling and study of cognitive abilities and personality. He advises the project team on the measurement of personality variables and is responsible for the analysis of the module "Social and Emotional Skills" for GESIS as part of its international activities at PIAAC.

Dr. Matthias Sand has been a member of the Survey Statistics team since 2013 and is entrusted with the planning and implementation of complex sample designs. He is an expert in all aspects of sampling, weighting and imputation. He advises the project team in the area of sampling and weighting.

Dr. Silke Schneider is an expert in the field of assessing individual educational attainment in (especially international) surveys and on relevant international standards (ISCED). She advises the project team on the adaptation of the socio-demographic variables of the background questionnaire, especially the educational variables.

Dr. Heike Wirth is an expert in the field of German and European microdata and in social structure research with a focus on households and families. She advises the project team on the topic of data protection, including strategic data protection decisions for data publication.