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Programme for the International
Assessment of Adult Competencies

International Consortium

The international consortium for PIAAC consists of six organizations from four different countries. Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, USA, led by Dr. Irwin Kirsch, is responsible for the overall coordination of PIAAC.

Tasks of the Consortium

  • International project management
  • Development of the international study design
  • Development of standards for all areas of study implementation
  • Development of the cognitive assessment
  • Development of the background questionnaire
  • Development and programming of the computer delivery platform
  • Quality control
  • International data management
  • Data scaling and analysis

The Distribution of Tasks Among the International Partners

  • ETS: In addition to the overall coordination of the project and the consortium, ETS is responsible for coordinating with the OECD, advisory boards, experts, and participating countries, for the study design, the cognitive assessment, the development and support of the PIAAC survey platform, and for data scaling and analysis.
  • cApStAn: cApStAn (Brussels) is responsible for the general translation guidelines for the cognitive assessment and carries out the linguistic control (verification) of all survey instruments in the languages of the participating countries.
  • GESIS: As part of the international consortium, GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences contributes to the development of the background questionnaire and is responsible for the harmonization of measures of formal education, training activities, and socio-emotional skills, as well as the preparation of translation guidelines and validation of the background questionnaire.
  • IEA: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA, Hamburg)  is responsible for data management and data processing at the international level and the production of the final international data sets.
  • ROA: The Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), a research institute based at the University of Maastricht, is responsible for the conceptual development and content of the background questionnaire.
  • Westat: Westat, a US-based research and service institute in the field of survey methods, is responsible for developing standards and monitoring sampling and survey operations. In addition, they conduct weighting and non-response-bias analyses for many of the participating countries.