This statistical release presents the results for Ireland of the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills, also known as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies or PIAAC. The survey was carried out in Ireland between September 2022 and June 2023 by the Central Statistics Office on behalf of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.
The survey was conducted in 31 countries under the direction and supervision of the OECD and a consortium of international institutions. The OECD has published a comprehensive international report outlining the findings of PIAAC across all participating countries, along with a reader’s companion and detailed technical report. Please see the OECD's Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC).
Each element of the survey, from questionnaire design and data collection to weighting and the calculation of the final estimates was executed in accordance with the Technical Standards and Guidelines set down by the OECD.
The PIAAC assessment of literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving is based on conceptual frameworks that define what these skills are. The assessment tasks reflect how these skills are applied across a wide range of situations in adults’ lives. A prominent role is played by tasks embedded in data intensive, complex digital environments, which are increasingly prevalent in the workplace and everyday life in modern societies.
Assessment items differ along various dimensions: cognitive processes (i.e., the mental strategies that form part of the skill in question), content (i.e., the artefacts, knowledge, representations, and situations to which these cognitive processes are applied), and contexts (i.e., the settings in which the skill is used) in which they are presented. A large set of items is needed to cover the different aspects of a skill domain, as well as the variety of contexts in which adults are required to use that particular skill to solve tasks.
Literacy and numeracy were also assessed in the first cycle of PIAAC. The frameworks used in the second cycle build on the past frameworks but have been revised and extended to ensure relevance to contemporary reality and understandings of the phenomena measured. The links with the first cycle of the survey remain strong, both at the conceptual level and at the practical level, as the second cycle relies on many assessment items already used in the first cycle. Such common items allow for establishing strong psychometrics links across the two assessments. However, it should be noted that the ‘Adaptive Problem Solving’ assessment included in the second cycle of PIAAC is not comparable to the ‘Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments’ assessment that featured in Cycle 1.
In the 2023 PIAAC, literacy is defined as ‘accessing, understanding, evaluating, and reflecting on written texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society’. See reference - Rouet et al., 2021.
Proficiency in literacy is crucial for adults across their personal, social, and professional lives. Throughout the day, adults engage in reading activities of a diverse nature, spanning from delving into extensive pieces of continuous text to swiftly scanning pages for pertinent information. These activities encompass reading emails, leaflets, timetables, and instruction manuals, for example.
An example of a literacy assessment item is presented in Image 2.1, “Bread and Crackers”. In this item, information is presented on why and when bread gets hard, but crackers get soft. Readers must make inferences based on the information presented in the text in order to determine if a set of statements is true for bread, crackers, or both. Respondents are asked to tap on a response for each of the presented statements. Only one response can be selected for each one.
Footnote: Literacy assessment items released by OECD for circulation.
In the 2023 PIAAC assessment, numeracy encompasses ‘accessing, using, and reasoning critically with mathematical content, information and ideas represented in multiple ways in order to engage in and manage the mathematical demands of a range of situations in adult life’. See reference - Tout et al., 2021.
Individuals are presented with ever increasing amounts of information of a quantitative or mathematical nature through internet-based or technology-based resources, which have to be located, selected or filtered, interpreted, at times questioned and doubted, and analysed for its relevance to the responses needed.
Image 2.2 presents an example numeracy assessment item, “Wallpaper”. It provides measurements of a bedroom and relies on an interactive tool to calculate how many rolls of wallpaper will be required to wallpaper the room. For this item, the wallpaper calculator has already been used to determine the number of rolls needed. However, an error was made when one or more values were entered into the tool. The task is to identify the error(s) and enter the correct value(s).
Footnote: Numeracy assessment items released by OECD for circulation.
Adaptive problem solving involves ‘the capacity to achieve one’s goals in a dynamic situation in which a method for solution is not immediately available. It requires engaging in cognitive and metacognitive processes to define the problem, search for information, and apply a solution in a variety of information environments and contexts’. See reference - Greiff et al., 2021.
Adaptive problem solving (APS) captures the fact that individuals need to be more adaptive to change and willing to modify their plans in pursuit of their goals. APS has three important key features and emphasises individuals’ capacity to: Firstly, flexibly and dynamically adapt their problem solving strategies to a dynamically changing environment; secondly, identify and select among a range of available physical, social, and digital resources; and thirdly, monitor and reflect on their progress in solving problems through metacognitive processes (i.e., the ability to calibrate one’s comprehension of the problem, evaluate potential solutions, and monitor progress towards the goals).
Adaptive problem solving is a new domain developed for the 2023 PIAAC. Therefore, results are not comparable with those of the assessment of problem solving in technology-rich environments, which was administered in the first cycle of the survey.
An example item for adaptive problem solving is presented in Images 2.3a & 2.3b, "School route".
Respondents must use an interactive map to accomplish pre-defined goals. The initially static situation becomes dynamic due to obstacles that change the presented problem and the available solutions.
In the first item, Image 2.3a, the problem solver needs to use an interactive map to find the fastest route to accomplish three goals, keeping a set of time constraints in mind. The problem solver needs to: take a child to school by a designated time, purchase groceries, and return home by a designated time. The total driving time (shown at the bottom right of the screen) updates as the route is selected by the respondent. This could be considered a standard problem solving task, in which a solution needs to be found given some constraints that need to be satisfied.
In the second item, Image 2.3b, the situation becomes dynamic as the problem solver must deal with new circumstances that interfere with the initial problem solution, i.e. a water main breaks so the user must now go to a different shop. Impasses must be overcome, and additional constraints need to be taken into consideration when adapting the initial problem solution.
Footnote: Adaptive problem solving assessment items released by OECD for circulation.
The 2023 PIAAC assessments required a sample of adults aged 16-65 in Ireland to complete a set of tasks (also called assessment items), that can only be solved if adults have a sufficient level of literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving skills. The performance of adults in these assessments is used to estimate their proficiency in each of these skill domains. Such estimates are then reported on three, independent, 500-point scales. The same scale is used to classify assessment items according to their difficulty. At each point on the scale, an individual with a given level of proficiency has a 67% chance of successfully completing tasks located at that same level. Adults at a given level of proficiency may be able to complete more difficult tasks (those with higher values on the scale), albeit at a lower probability of success. They will similarly have a higher probability of successfully completing easier tasks.
Literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving are separate skills. While they are all reported on proficiency scales that range from 0 to 500, the proficiency across domains cannot be directly compared. While future chapters will often show results from different domains in a single figure, this is not intended to suggest comparability. Any comparison of performance across different domains must necessarily be of a relative nature. For example, it can be said that an individual (or a group) is relatively better at literacy than numeracy if his or her rank in the ordered literacy distribution is higher than his or her rank in the numeracy distribution.
Finally, it is worth noting that proficiency is necessarily linked to a specific language, the one which is used in the assessment items. The language of the assessment in Ireland was English. However, participating countries could choose the assessment language, and some countries decided to administer the assessment in multiple languages.
The PIAAC survey directly assesses adults’ literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving skills. A basic command of these skills is thought to be necessary for fully integrating and participating in the labour market, education and training, and social and civic life. Literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills are adaptable and highly transferable, relevant to many social contexts and work situations.
The vast majority of countries that participated in the 2023 PIAAC also took part in its first cycle, and some of them also participated in previous international assessments of adult skills, such as the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) which was conducted in Ireland in 1995. These countries can, therefore, track the evolution of information-processing skills of their adult population over time.
The results of the survey are presented in two main ways; mean scale scores and the distribution of the population across the levels of each scale. The mean scale score provides an estimate of the average ability of the population on a particular domain (e.g. literacy).
The distribution provides estimates of the proportion of the population with different levels of ability along each dimension. In isolation the average or mean score provides a limited way of understanding the level of ability within the population and it is necessary to examine the accompanying distribution to understand the factors that underlie the mean score.
Once the data was collected nationally, the performance of each respondent on the individual test items was analysed and transformed using Item Response Theory (IRT) methodology by Education and Testing Services (ETS) in the USA on behalf of the OECD. This methodology allows every respondent in the sample to be given a ‘scale score’ for each of the three assessment domains representing his/her level of proficiency in that domain, even though respondents will have answered different subsets of the assessment items and may not even have taken any items in a particular domain. The scores on each scale range from 0 to 500 and the overall performance of the population and subgroups within it are considered in terms of their average or mean score on each scale.
Another important feature of the IRT process is the hierarchy of assessment items it creates based on the proportion of people who get each task correct or in other words the difficulty of the task. Within this hierarchy, groups of items that lie close together and share common characteristics are clustered and then scores on the scale can be aligned with specific groups of items. In this way the underlying construct (e.g. literacy) can be broken down into meaningful levels. Both the literacy and numeracy scales are broken down into six levels whereas the adaptive problem solving scale uses five.
Literacy | |
Level | Range of Scale Scores |
---|---|
Below Level 1 | Less than 176 |
Level 1 | 176-225 |
Level 2 | 226-275 |
Level 3 | 276-325 |
Level 4 | 326-375 |
Level 5 | 376-500 |
Numeracy | |
Level | Range of Scale Scores |
---|---|
Below Level 1 | Less than 176 |
Level 1 | 176-225 |
Level 2 | 226-275 |
Level 3 | 276-325 |
Level 4 | 326-375 |
Level 5 | 376-500 |
Adaptive Problem Solving | |
Level | Range of Scale Scores |
---|---|
Below Level 1 | Less than 176 |
Level 1 | 176-225 |
Level 2 | 226-275 |
Level 3 | 276-325 |
Level 4 | 326-500 |
For example, at Level 1 on the Literacy scale there are a set of tasks that respondents who score between 176 and 225 have a reasonably high probability (67%) of getting consistently correct. The corollary of this is that as respondents whose scale score puts them at Level 1 face more difficult tasks from higher levels, their probability of getting these items correct diminishes. A full description of proficiency level tasks for all three domains is provided in the background notes of this report. The characteristics of these tasks for literacy at level 1 are described below.
Level Scale Score | Task Descriptions |
Level 1 – 176 to 226 points |
Adults at Level 1 are able to access a single piece of information in relatively short texts. They can understand the meaning of sentences or short texts, as well as the organization of a list or multiple sections within a single page. |
Rouet, J. et al. (2021), “PIAAC Cycle 2 assessment framework: Literacy”, in The Assessment Frameworks for Cycle 2 of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Tout, D. et al. (2021), “PIAAC Cycle 2 assessment framework: Numeracy”, in The Assessment Frameworks for Cycle 2 of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, OECD Publishing, Paris.
Greiff, S. et al. (2021), “PIAAC Cycle 2 assessment framework: Adaptive problem solving”, in The Assessment Frameworks for Cycle 2 of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, OECD Publishing, Paris.
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