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Early detection of risk of failure on interactive tasks comes with great potential for better understanding how examinees differ in their initial behavior as well as for adaptively tailoring interactive tasks to examinees' competence levels. Drawing on procedures originating in shopper intent prediction on e-commerce platforms, we introduce and showcase a machine learning-based procedure that leverages early-window clickstream data for systematically investigating early predictability of behavioral outcomes on interactive tasks. We derive features related to the occurrence, frequency, sequentiality, and timing of performed actions from early-window clickstreams and use extreme gradient boosting for classification. Multiple measures are suggested to evaluate the quality and utility of early predictions. The procedure is outlined by investigating early predictability of failure on two PIAAC 2012 Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments (PSTRE) tasks. We investigated early windows of varying size in terms of time and in terms of actions. We achieved good prediction performance at stages where examinees had, on average, at least two thirds of their solution process ahead of them, and the vast majority of examinees who failed could potentially be detected to be at risk before completing the task. In-depth analyses revealed different features to be indicative of success and failure at different stages of the solution process, thereby highlighting the potential of the applied procedure for gaining a finer-grained understanding of the trajectories of behavioral patterns on interactive tasks.

Can participation in job-related training contribute to the formation and maintenance of adults' literacy skills? Although evidence suggests that participation in training is related to higher literacy skills, it remains unclear whether this association reflects a causal effect of training participation on literacy (training effects), results from the self-selection of more high-skilled individuals into training (selection effects), or is due to other sources of endogeneity (e.g., omitted variable bias). To unravel these possibilities, we used data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and its German follow-up, PIAAC-Longitudinal (PIAAC-L). As these unique data offer repeated measures of literacy skills, spaced three years apart, in a large and representative sample, they allowed us to disentangle training effects from selection effects and to account for potential endogeneity. Analyses revealed that, even after taking account of formal education and a host of job characteristics, individuals with higher literacy skills were more likely to participate in training. By contrast, no evidence for effects of training on literacy skills emerged in any of our models, which comprised lagged-dependent, fixed effects, and instrumental-variable models. These findings suggest that, rather than job-related training contributing to literacy development, individuals with higher literacy skills are more likely to participate in training.

Based on comparative adult education statistics offered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) and country case studies, this book analyses the policies and structures that foster adult learning. It examines a variety of forms of adult learning, ranging from initial forms of post-compulsory education, such as upper secondary tracks and tertiary education, to firm training, compensatory adult education and learning for civic and leisure oriented purposes. Throughout the book, adult learning systems are directly linked to a variety of structural and public policy frameworks using a comparative welfare state approach. Themes such as pathways to learning and transition systems, participation patterns in higher education and participation patterns in other organized forms of adult learning are covered. The countries discussed are the UK, the USA, Korea, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands. Situated at the intersection between scholarship and policy and using a mixed-methods approach, this title contributes fundamental insights into the further study of policies and structures related to alternative post-compulsory learning pathways.

Psychological research, including research into adult reading, is frequently based on convenience samples of undergraduate students. This practice raises concerns about the external validity of many accepted findings. The present study seeks to determine how strong this student sampling bias is in literacy and numeracy research. We use the nationally representative cross-national data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to quantify skill differences between (i) students and the general population aged 16-65, and (ii) students and age-matched non-students aged 16-25. The median effect size for the comparison (i) of literacy scores across 32 countries was d = .56, and for comparison (ii) d = .55, which exceeds the average effect size in psychological experiments (d = .40). Numeracy comparisons (i) and (ii) showed similarly strong differences. The observed differences indicate that undergraduate students are not representative of the general population nor age-matched non-students.

Background: A potential problem of low-stakes large-scale assessments such as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is low test-taking engagement. The present study pursued two goals in order to better understand conditioning factors of test-taking disengagement: First, a model-based approach was used to investigate whether item indicators of disengagement constitute a continuous latent person variable by domain. Second, the effects of person and item characteristics were jointly tested using explanatory item response models. Methods: Analyses were based on the Canadian sample of Round 1 of the PIAAC, with N = 26,683 participants completing test items in the domains of literacy, numeracy, and problem solving. Binary item disengagement indicators were created by means of item response time thresholds. Results: The results showed that disengagement indicators define a latent dimension by domain. Disengagement increased with lower educational attainment, lower cognitive skills, and when the test language was not the participant's native language. Gender did not exert any effect on disengagement, while age had a positive effect for problem solving only. An item's location in the second of two assessment modules was positively related to disengagement, as was item difficulty. The latter effect was negatively moderated by cognitive skill, suggesting that poor test-takers are especially likely to disengage with more difficult items. Conclusions: The negative effect of cognitive skill, the positive effect of item difficulty, and their negative interaction effect support the assumption that disengagement is the outcome of individual expectations about success (informed disengagement). (DIPF/Orig.).

Practice Engagement Theory (PET) posits that individuals' literacy proficiencies develop as a by-product of their engagement in everyday reading and writing practices and, reciprocally, that literacy proficiencies affect levels of engagement in reading and writing practices. This suggests that literacy training which increases engagement in meaningful practices might generate proficiency growth. Research has shown that this approach does indeed seem to be effective in improving (adult) learners' literacy proficiency. A number of cross-sectional comparisons of participants' and non-participants' performance in various training activities, as well as quantitative modelling of adults' proficiency growth in longitudinal studies have confirmed the theoretical assumptions of PET. The authors of this article describe the first application of PET to literacy and numeracy development in a longitudinal study of a nationally representative adult population. Their investigation followed a sample of adults initially interviewed and assessed in the German component of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), adding longitudinal data from three additional waves of the national extension study (PIAAC-L), which included repeated assessments of literacy and numeracy proficiency over a period of three years. The authors' quantitative modelling of the growth of literacy and numeracy proficiency over time provides strong support for PET. Their comparisons of how various practice engagement indexes predict growth of literacy and numeracy proficiencies indicate that reading engagement is the strongest predictor of literacy growth and maths engagement is the strongest predictor of numeracy growth. The authors conclude their article by considering their findings' implications for sustainable development, lifelong learning policy and future research into the development of adult literacy and numeracy proficiency.

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt die Grundzüge von PIAAC-L, der Nachfolgestudie von PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) in Deutschland und stellt die PIAAC-L-Daten vor. PIAAC-L war eine gemeinschaftliche Studie von drei groß angelegten Erhebungen in Deutschland, PIAAC, dem Nationalen Bildungspanel (NEPS) und dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP). Die Befragungspersonen der deutschen PIAAC-Stichprobe (2011/2012) und die erwachsenen Mitglieder ihrer Haushalte wurden über drei Wellen (2014, 2015, 2016) befragt. PIAAC-L kombinierte Designmerkmale und Instrumente aus PIAAC, NEPS und dem SOEP und beinhaltete eine erneute Messung von grundlegenden Kompetenzen. Die Lesekompetenz und die Alltagsmathematische Kompetenz wurden mit Instrumenten aus PIAAC und NEPS gemessen. Die Messung wurde auf mit den PIAAC-Befragungspersonen zusammenlebende (Ehe)partnerinnen und -partner ausgeweitet. Die Interviewer-administrierten Personen- und Haushaltsfragebögen deckten ein breites Spektrum an Inhalten ab. Die PIAAC-L-Daten, die Forscherinnen und Forschern für Sekundäranalysen zur Verfügung stehen, erlauben es, grundlegende Kompetenzen im Zeitverlauf und Faktoren, die mit ihrem Erwerb und Erhalt zusammenhängen, zu untersuchen. Im Hinblick auf den deutschen Kontext ist die Studie von Interesse, da sie Expertise und Inhalte aus drei nationalen Großerhebungen kombiniert. This paper describes the main features of PIAAC-L, the German longitudinal follow-up to PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies), and presents the PIAAC-L data. PIAAC-L was a collaborative study by three large-scale surveys in Germany, PIAAC, the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Respondents from the German PIAAC sample (2011/2012) and the adult members of their households were interviewed over three waves (2014, 2015, 2016). PIAAC-L combined design features and instruments from PIAAC, NEPS, and the SOEP and included a re-assessment of basic cognitive skills. Literacy and numeracy were measured with instruments from PIAAC and NEPS and the assessment was extended to include cohabiting spouses/partners of PIAAC respondents. Interviewer-administered person and household questionnaires covered a broad range of content. The PIAAC-L data, which are available to researchers for secondary analyses, allow to explore cognitive skills over time and factors related to their acquisition and maintenance. In the German context, the study is of interest because it combined expertise and content from three national large-scale surveys.

Vocationally educated individuals often find employment sooner after school than those with a general educational qualification. A recent study has argued that the higher employment probability associated with a vocational qualification reverses in later life. The main explanation is that although having (occupation-)specific skills is an advantage when entering the labor market, specific skills also make the vocationally educated less flexible. This life cycle effect is hypothesized to be especially strong in countries where the vocational system provides highly occupation-specific skills. We test these two hypotheses on cross-national data from PIAAC 2012. Using logistic regressions with country fixed effects, we find that individuals with a vocational qualification have a higher employment probability than those with a general qualification at the start of their career, but this pattern reverses in later life. In contrast to earlier findings, we do not find that this effect varies systematically across countries with different vocational educational systems.

Computer-based interactive items have become prevalent in recent educational assessments. In such items, detailed human–computer interactive process, known as response process, is recorded in a log file. The recorded response processes provide great opportunities to understand individuals’ problem solving processes. However, difficulties exist in analyzing these data as they are high-dimensional sequences in a nonstandard format. This paper aims at extracting useful information from response processes. In particular, we consider an exploratory analysis that extracts latent variables from process data through a multidimensional scaling framework. A dissimilarity measure is described to quantify the discrepancy between two response processes. The proposed method is applied to both simulated data and real process data from 14 PSTRE items in PIAAC 2012. A prediction procedure is used to examine the information contained in the extracted latent variables. We find that the extracted latent variables preserve a substantial amount of information in the process and have reasonable interpretability. We also empirically prove that process data contains more information than classic binary item responses in terms of out-of-sample prediction of many variables.