About PIAAC

International Study of Adult Skills and Competencies

PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) is a programme of assessment and analysis of adult skills.

It is undertaken in Ireland by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) at the behest of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science.

The study measures adults’ proficiency in three key information processing skills – literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving. This study is administered every 10 years and is currently in its second cycle.

PIAAC cycle 2 continues the work of previous studies, PIAAC cycle 1 in 2012, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) between 1994 and 1998 and the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) Study from 2002 to 2006.

How is PIAAC managed internationally?

PIAAC is a cooperative venture managed at the international level by participating OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. The project will be steered by a Board of Participating Countries (BPC) and supported by a Technical Advisory Group (TAG). The OECD has contracted the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to manage the consortium responsible for the implementation of PIAAC.

The organisations in the consortium are led by ETS (Educational Testing Service) as the project director and comprise: Westat, cApStAn, the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) at the University of Maastricht, the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS), the German Institute for International Education Research (DIPF) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

At national level, National Project Managers (NPM) are responsible for ensuring that the implementation of PIAAC in their country follows the guidelines and international standards approved by the BPC (Board of Participating Countries).

International Co-operation

As an international cooperative venture, PIAAC will provide participating countries with access to high-quality expertise in the measurement of adult skills. By sharing the costs of development and pooling resources, participating countries will be able to provide a comparative analysis of skill-formation systems and international benchmarking regarding results.

Quality Assurance

The international PIAAC consortium has developed extensive quality standards that apply internationally. National adherence to these standards is monitored.

The following areas especially are subject to international quality assurance:  

• adherence to ethical principles
• sampling plan and sample selection
• adaptation, translation and validation of the survey instruments
• IT facilities: adaptation and integration of survey software into a national IT system
• human and organisational resources of the institute conducting the study
• interviewer training and monitoring
• data collection, processing and validation
• checking of the realised sample and the non-respondents for structural characteristics   
• data privacy and data security
• data analysis and reporting.

What is the timetable for the implementation of PIAAC?

Data collection for the PIAAC Cycle 2 Main Study will take place between September 2022 and April 2023, with results published in 2024.

What countries are participating in PIAAC?

Thirty-one countries are participating in the second cycle of PIAAC

Why assess adult skills?

There is a growing interest by national governments and other stakeholders in the international assessment of adult skills that would allow monitoring of how well-prepared populations are for the challenges of a knowledge-based society.

Directly assessing adult skills has significant advantages over measuring competencies based on educational qualifications, since an educational diploma does not certify a precise skill even on the day it is awarded.

A certificate or diploma’s ability to give an accurate picture of an individual’s competencies also diminishes as time progresses.

PIAAC is designed to enhance the understanding of the effectiveness of education and training systems in developing basic cognitive skills and key generic work skills. 

PIAAC will be used to gauge skill levels following completion of initial education. For older respondents PIAAC will also allow examination and analysis of the processes of skills loss.

Also, the maintenance and effectiveness of education and skill formation systems in supporting skills development over a lifecycle can be accurately accessed.

Data from this study facilitates a better understanding of:

• Performance of education and training systems
• The extent and dimensions of low literacy levels
• Gaps between labour markets and education and training
• Equity levels in access to education and intergenerational mobility
• Young people’s transition from education to work
• Identification of at-risk populations
• Links between key cognitive skills and variables, such as demographics, educational background, health, etc.

What skills were assessed in previous surveys?

PIAAC Cycle 2 builds on the previous studies of PIAAC Cycle 1 in 2012, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) between 1994 and 1998 and the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) Study 2002 to 2006. 

The first cycle of PIAAC was carried out in Ireland in 2012 and assessed the skills of participants in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Its results were published in 2013.

Link to PIAAC 2012 Report 

In the mid-1990s, three waves of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) assessed the prose, document and quantitative literacy of adults in 22 countries. Between 2002 and 2006, the Adult Literacy and Life skills (ALL) study assessed prose and document literacy, numeracy and problem-solving in eleven countries and one state. These studies have demonstrated the feasibility of assessing internationally how well adults perform literacy, numeracy and problem-solving tasks in real-life situations. Ireland participated in IALS in 1995.

Link to IALS Report 

What’s new in PIAAC Cycle 2?

This second cycle of PIAAC will build on previous studies to extend adult skills assessment beyond the more traditional measures of literacy and numeracy. There will be sections for studying adaptive problem solving which is the ability to use technology to solve problems and accomplish complex tasks.

There is a growing need to collect more sophisticated information that will more closely match the ambitions of governments to develop a high-quality workforce.

Problem-solving and an ability to deal with complex information presented electronically are key skills that will be needed by the workforce going into the future.

PIAAC’s measurement of competencies in adaptive problem solving and of skills used in the workplace moves the study well beyond conventional measures. These two features will help to assess the extent to which adults have acquired a generic set of skills and competencies. At the same time, PIAAC Cycle 2 looks more closely than previous studies at the factors which influence the development and maintenance of skills.

Data protection

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

• The right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. Contact details: Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland.
• The right to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction or to object to the processing of your personal data.

However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfilment of those purposes.

Further data protection information regarding PIAAC is available on the CSO website at this link.

Link to PIAAC Survey Transparency Notices