International Comparative Surveys Research Articles

Policy recommendations for improving health literacy: based on European Health Literacy Survey 2019

Abstract The European network on Measuring Population and Organizational Health Literacy (M-POHL) was founded in 2018 under the umbrella of the European Health Information Initiative (EHII) of the World Health Organization - Regional Office for Europe. Health literacy (HL) is increasingly recognized as a critical determinant, mediator or moderator of health, and large parts of populations have been shown to have limited HL. Therefore, it is one of the aims of M-POHL to install international comparative population HL surveys at regular intervals. These can provide a valuable and valid basis for developing evidence-informed recommendations for policy, research and practice in the field of HL. To meet this purpose, M-POHL brings together experts from research and policy. Following up on the first European HL survey (HLS-EU), the first project of M-POHL was the international HLS19 survey, with 17 participating countries from the WHO European region. In addition to general population HL, the survey also covered specific HL's such as digital, communication, navigation, and vaccination HL. Despite the obstacles posed by the Corona pandemic, the survey could be administered, and an international comparative report was prepared by the HLS19 project consortium. On this basis, M-POHL will hold two workshops in June and August 2021 to develop resulting recommendations for policy and research in Europe. It is expected that these recommendations will a. o. focus on: population groups in most need of support in their HL; how to improve different dimensions of HL (such as finding, understanding, assessing, and applying relevant health information); HL as applied to health care, disease prevention, and health promotion; and aspects relating to the specific HL's measured. The presentation will describe the process of development, and give an overview of the M-POHL recommendations.

Are Academics Driven by Managerialism? Governance and the Changing Role of Academics on the Way Towards a Knowledge Society

Changes in the governance system have been viewed as one of the key issues of higher education since about the 1990s. In many countries, the “managerial university” emerged accompanied by a controversial discourse about its strengths and about dangers implied. As academics are key actors performing key functions in higher education and as governance reforms increased the power of university management to steer academics, the academics’ perception of and response to the “managerial university” is crucial for its successes and failures. International comparative surveys of academics undertaken in the early 1990s and during the years 2007-2010 indicate that the modes of governance and the responses to these modes by academics vary more substantially across countries than the convergent international discourse suggests. Altogether, scholars’ views and behavior seem to have changed to a lesser extent than expected. The third comparative survey of that kind addresses similar issues, but additionally raises the question of whether strong footprints can be observed of the move toward a “knowledge society” with regard to the governance of higher education and academics’ views and activities.

ADAPTATION OF THE HEALTH LITERACY HLS19 QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE RUSSIAN POPULATION

Health literacy is recognized as one of the most important determinants of health on the global level. International comparative population-based surveys on measuring health literacy using unified methodological approaches contribute to decisive national instruments on measurement, monitoring and improvement of health literacy in a population. These studies also contribute to the adaptation of the measures, taking into account the level of health literacy of vulnerable groups in particular. Until today, there was no instrument in the Russian Federation for measuring health literacy at the population level providing internationally comparable data. We attempted to adapt the HLS19 questionnaire developed within the international Health Literacy Survey in 2019 for use in Russia. The adaptation of the questionnaire was based on the European methodology which was tested in several countries of Europe and Asia and included 5 stages: translation from English into Russian, back translation from Russian into English, focus group, expert assessment and field testing. In spite of the fact that the instrument has already been translated into the Russian language and tested in some countries for the Russian-speaking population, a substantial adaptation of the questionnaire was needed taking into account the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the Russian population.

Teaching Using ICT in an International Perspective: Towards Modern Pedagogy

Digital technologies have become an essential part of the education policy in most European countries. ICT implementation into teaching and learning entails considerable potential to encourage or trigger changes in the field of education, particularly in the work of teachers, which leads to thinking about the so-called modern pedagogy. The aim of the study is, therefore, to explore and explain how ICT-related topics are formulated in the education policy of three European countries. Another goal is to describe how Czech, Slovak and Polish teachers use and perceive digital technologies in their work. We use analysis of educational policy documents of selected countries and analysis of three international comparative surveys as well. It is possible to say that in the educational policy of the three countries there is a visible deviation from the traits of traditional pedagogy, with an emphasis on the development of the skills component of learning, in particular on key competences. The teachers themselves are on an imaginary path from traditional to modern pedagogy, in which the possibilities of digital technologies would be used more and more efficiently. It should be teaching, that is more focused on pupils’ active participation, and learning not confined to classroom space.

Economic Sentiment Level versus the Quality of Life in European Union Member States

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the interplay between variables pertaining to the satis-faction of life and economic sentiments of citizens of selected European countries. The analysis of the connections will be conducted based on existing subjective primary data. The data in question are results of international comparative surveys (European Social Survey, ESS; the OECD's Better Life Initiative) and results of consumer economic sentiment surveys ordered by the European Commission. The research procedure also benefitted from the selected items of literature available in the form of books and articles. Population economic sentiments are subject to cyclical changes connected with the changes in economic situation in individual countries. The analysis of secondary data allows for the con-clusion that there is a statistically significant direct or indirect strong relationship between assessments of life satisfaction and consumer confidence indicator. The grouping of the researched countries based on secondary data has made it possible to capture the similarities between individual states.

Ugdymo turinio kaita Lietuvoje: globalizacijos padariniai

Straipsnyje pristatomos Lietuvos bendrojo ugdymo turinio (toliau – UT) formavimo tendencijos, į jas žvelgiant kaip į tarptautinių tyrimų nulemtus pokyčius. Teoriniu pagrindu analizuojamas švietimas atsižvelgiant į globalizacijos kontekstą. Pateikiama UT veikiančių jėgų – tarptautinių organizacijų apžvalga. Gilinamasi į EBPO vykdomą tarptautinį penkiolikmečių pasiekimų tyrimą (PISA) bei jo įtaką užsienio valstybių švietimo sistemoms. Remiantis pusiau struktūruoto ekspertų interviu metu surinktų duomenų analize ir teorine tyrimo dalimi, identifikuojama tarptautinių tyrimų įtaka Lietuvos bendrajam UT. Išvadose teigiama, kad dėl tarptautinių lyginamųjų tyrimų koncentruojantis į aukštus pasiekimus ir įgūdžius su gamyba susijusiose disciplinose, Lietuvos bendrasis ugdymo turinys siaurėja, taip atsitraukdamas nuo švietimo kaip holistinio socialinės sanglaudos stiprinimo ir visuomenės gerovės didinimo šaltinio. Atsižvelgiant į tai, keltini pagrįsti Lietuvos švietimo politikos kryptingumo klausimai.

Reflections on international comparative education survey methodology: a case study of the European Survey on Language Competences

This paper reflects on the methodology used in international comparative education surveys by conducting a systematic review of the European Survey on Language Competences (ESLC). The ESLC was administered from February to March 2011, with final results released in June 2012. The survey tested approximately 55,000 students across 14 European countries with the goals of (1) providing comparative data on foreign language competence and (2) informing policy on language learning and teaching. The paper argues that there is a gap between the purpose of international comparative education surveys such as the ESLC and the methodology used, and thus also the ability of the data to feed into and inform policy. It is suggested that further methodological advances and improvements are needed if surveys are to produce data that give a clearer and more in-depth understanding of what actually goes on in classrooms and positively impact on learning and teaching.

Pessimistic futures generation for pessimistic future generations? The youth has the future but the older has the authority

In this paper the German-Hungarian international representative comparative youth surveys have been used as basic reference points (15–24 years old youth, 1984/1985). The social changes in the last decade have had a dramatic effect on both the Hungarian and German societies, which are represented by university students’ opinion as well (1985–2000). The civilization theory of Margaret Mead proved to be a useful principle in interpretation of the common European youth cultural style. At the radical social changes, common high pessimistic characteristics can be found in the relation of the future-orientation and generations’ attitude scale of German and Hungarian youth. In the 10–15 year period after the political system change significant difference can be observed in the future-orientation of German and Hungarian youth attitude. In this paper we discuss in detail the connection between the pessimistic youth attitude and its effect on sustainable development. We argue that sustainable development can be imagined only if the optimistic youth attitude has effect on the negative demographical changes in Europe. Our goal was to discover new life sentiments which can be detected from the opinions of today's Hungarian youth. According to our hypothesis, young people experience the enlarging process of EU as peripheral participants representing that both the optimistic and pessimistic youth attitudes equally refuse to grow up more children in family, which suggest that the sustainable development is not in the focus of their future orientation.

Evaluation of Validity and Validation by Means of the Argument-based Approach

Validity is the most important quality aspect of tests and assessments, but it is not clear how validity can be evaluated. This article presents a procedure for the evaluation of validity and validation which is an extension of the argument-based approach to validation. The evaluation consists of three criteria to evaluate the interpretive argument, the validity evidence provided, and the validity argument. This procedure is illustrated with an existing assessment: the driver performance assessment. The article concludes with recommendations for the application of the procedure. Keywords Competence assessment, validity, validation, argument-based approach, evaluation. Expressive Reading Aloud on IEA-PIRLS 2006 Gabriella Agrusti This in-depth research study was aimed at investigating the effects of readaloud modification on students' performance on PIRLS 2006 reading comprehension tests, in two different forms: expressive reading and neutral reading. In Italy international comparative surveys often represent the main reference measure for student achievements in basic skills, but few experimental designs descending from secondary analyses attempt to investigate possible relationships among variables in order to translate results in suggestions for teaching practices. The present study was intended as a first step in this direction, analyzing if specific aspects of reading aloud can influence students' achievements in comprehension. Differences in means between groups were found statistically significant between expressive reading aloud administration and silent standard administration, though the strong concurrent validity of PIRLS 2006 test items allowed only a small variance in results due to experimental modification. Neutral reading aloud alone did not have significantly different effects on test results, confirming the general assumption that at this age word recognition skill is at an advanced level. More evident results were shown in items focused on the processes of interpreting and integrating ideas and information, highlighting how inferential more than retrieval processes are influenced by reading aloud, that efficiently convey the gist of the story and some of the implications in meaning of complex semantic topics, such as the identification and description of main characters' feelings.

The Significance of the International Self-report Delinquency Study (ISRD)

The subject of the article is the second ISRD study in which 30 countries participated and collaborated. The article describes the underlying rationale of the ISRD study, its objectives, organization, level of analysis and the way in which different criminological theories are tested. The most important aspects of international comparative self-report surveys are highlighted, such as the need for maximum standardization and for a steering group monitoring the whole process as well as the need for regular workshop meetings of participants. In the last section some illustrations of the study’s findings are presented.

Public perception of evolution and the rise of evolutionary psychology in Finland

In this paper we analyse the media debate in Finland that began after the publication in Science of a survey on the public acceptance of evolution. According to the results Finland ranked 17th among 34 countries. This was unexpected in a secular high tech nation with a consistent top performance in international comparative surveys on public education. We trace the main arguments in this debate in relation to previous studies on the public understanding of science and argue that newspaper claims of declining acceptance of evolutionism in Finland were based on rather ambivalent data. Furthermore, in the debate, evolutionary theory became a metonymy for science in society. The results published in Science provided a platform for a critique of religion and alternative movements, something quite uncommon in Finnish media. Finally, the debate was taken as an opportunity to promote evolutionary psychology as a legitimate social science.

Pedagogical practices and ICT use around the world: Findings from the IEA international comparative study SITES2006

This special issue presents a number of secondary analyses of data collected in 2006 in the Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES 2006). This study is the last of a number of international comparative surveys on information and communication technology (ICT) in education conducted under auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). After summarizing the aims and scope of previous studies, the aims of SITES 2006 as well as key aspects of the research design are summarized. This is followed by a brief abstract of each of the articles included in this special issue. Three articles discuss international findings of the study and also findings from three participating education systems (South Africa, Denmark, Hong Kong SAR) are presented.

'Hollandsche vecht-suffragettes'? Een kwestie uit de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse feminisme

‘Holland’s Militant Suffragettes’? A Theme from the History of Dutch FeminismThe historiography of feminism is bristling with international comparative surveys. It is precisely because of this that the use of national frameworks has been acknowledged, albeit unintentionally and indirectly. Nevertheless, this paper adopts the opposite stance, and argues that both national and internal affairs, as well as international and foreign affairs, can be viewed as categories which serve certain political agendas, thereby making it possible to distinguish between friends and foes in the political struggle. Historians should not reproduce such a differentiation but analyze it instead. To give an example of such an analysis, this paper outlines how the customary distinction between a moderate Dutch and a radical English electoral feminism gained an important impetus at a key moment: when in 1907 the discordant entanglement of political and personal contacts between feminists on both sides of the Channel eventually led to a schism in the Dutch Society for Women’s Right to Vote. This article is part of the special issue 'The Internationalization of the National History and the Pillarization'.

The value of international comparative studies of achievement – a Danish perspective

Barry McGaw, Education Director of the OECD until December 2005, has described and evaluated the current programme of international comparative assessment surveys, notably the PISA programme. Any international survey will have its stronger and its weaker points. With a high profile programme like PISA, there is a risk that the limitations will be overlooked by politicians eager to introduce reforms in a globalised information society. Five years have passed since the first publication of PISA results in December 2001. In Denmark, the results have led to profound educational reforms, but also to a number of supplementary studies that have examined and questioned the value of PISA and other international studies.

Reflections on the international comparative surveys debate

This issue of Assessment in Education follows an earlier issue on international studies of educational achievement. It concentrates on the PISA studies and brings together a number of distinguished researchers to comment on a position paper by Barry McGaw.

How to survey education for cross-national comparisons

Social surveys collect information on socio-demographic characteristics of respondents eligible for the interview. Among others, the highest attained level of education is one of the variables explaining the respondent's social and political comportment, the interviewee's human values and orientations, the transition from school to work, the position in the labor force and its segments, the social and economic behavior of the individual actor and structural inequalities in modern societies. Manifold strategies to operationalize the qualification and education variables during interviews can be observed in social surveys. They differ in the underlying latent concept captured, the ranking and classifying of levels into categories and clusters, the degree of classification and measurement details and finally the capabilities of comparison across time and across nations and cultures. The measurement of education for comparative research across countries is a complex task. The national systems of education and schooling are differently organized across the nations. Altogether four different types of school and training systems can be identified in Europe. In this paper we will sort the national certificates from general and vocational schools into one matrix, the newly developed Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner-matrix of education. This matrix allows us to compare the highest level of education a person has reached, as a combination of general and vocational education and useable for a person to obtain a starting position on the labor market. This article discusses those measurement instruments normally used in international comparative surveys and introduces the Hoffmeyer- Zlotnik/Warner-matrix of education, contrasting this matrix with the other established measurement instruments. To demonstrate the validity of our matrix, we show the advantages of our matrix exemplified in one case from nations out of the four types of different educational systems: Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, and France.

Stress and aging. A counter-cultural development of locus of control and coping behavior in the elderly

Large international comparative surveys showed that study of intra-cultural differences and of their modifications with aging could be a fertile way to understand the influence of culture on psychological processes. People who attribute what happens to them to internal and controllable causes use more coping strategies focused on the problem than people who put forward external causes. Results obtained on child and adult in occidental societies showed dominant tendencies towards the norm of internality and coping focused on problem solving. We assumed the converse hypothesis of a decreasing belief in the internal control and a recentering coping behavior on emotional regulation in the elderly, which results in an increasing maladjustment to dominant intracultural tendencies. We studied 215 French elderly subjects with a French scale assessing the type l locus of control (internal versus external) through 7 sources of reinforcement and with the French validation of the Vitaliano et al. coping scale assessing the strategies of adaptation (focused on problem solving versus on emotional control). The results showed that advancing age, contrary to the main intracultural injunctions, was linked to an increasing belief in external factors regulating life events and with an emotion focused coping of avoidance type when facing a recent stress. Unlike to the continuous emphasis, in our individualistic cultures, on the adaptation of the world to the self involving problem solving, it is the adaptation of the self to the world by managing the feelings, characteristic of collectivist cultures, which seems gradually to prevail during aging and could contribute to difficulties in adjustment of the elderly.

The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

One of the recent tributes to the success of Finnish schooling was the PISA 2000 project report. As befits the field of education, the explanations are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high‐quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this paper presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of the Finnish comprehensive school. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some ironic paradoxes and dilemmas that may be concealed by the success. The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they are just part of processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’.

The validity of international surveys of reading literacy: The case of the IEA reading literacy study

In the last twenty years the interest in international comparative surveys of educational achievement has increased as can be seen from the number of studies and participating nations. As the number of participating countries increases, the range of cultural differences becomes larger, and it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain internationally comparable data. Especially when it is no longer possible to use the same questionnaire in each group. This article describes the requirements that measures of reading literacy must meet to be comparable across nations, and the conditions that affect the usefulness of international comparisons. Before discussing the methodological problems of comparative surveys in Section 4 and 5, we discuss the definition of reading literacy in Section 2, and the possible reasons why comparative educational research has become so popular in Section 3. In Section 6 to 8 we consider the conditions that affect the comparability of measurements of reading literacy in more detail. In the final sections we summarize our findings. As an illustration we consider an international comparative study, which was recently conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The results of this study were reported in detail by Elley (1992, 1994), Postlethwaite and Ross, (1992), Lundberg and Linnakyki (1993), Wagemaker et al. (1996), the IEA (1995), and the US Department of Education (1995). We will refer in less detail to the ZntemationaE Adult Literacy Study (IALS), which was conducted in the autumn of 1994 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results of this study were published by the OECD in 1995 and 1996.

Standardization of blood pressure measurement in an international comparative study

In the context of a collaborative study on the epidemiology of hypertension in populations of West African origin procedures for standardization of the measurement of blood pressure were evaluated. Comparisons of mean levels of blood pressure, which in large part determine prevalence rates, are highly sensitive to differences in technique. While rotating a single field team may be the ideal approach to multisite studies, it is not practical in international collaborative research. Appropriate techniques to standardize multiple teams over a long period of time have not been well developed, however. In the present study 8981 individuals were examined in eight sites in six countries with the standard mercury sphygmomanometer. An evaluation the effectiveness of central training, site visits, monitoring of digit preference, and the use of an electronic device for internal standardization is described. In all but one of the sites reliability was high and comparable to the observers at the Coordinating Center. Digit preference for the entire set of measurements was limited (frequency of terminal zero = 23.5% for systolic and 28.9% for diastolic readings) and could be shown to have virtually no effect on prevalence rates or correlation estimates. Mean differences among observers within a given site and between sites were small (±0–5 mmHg). While logistically complex, these methods can provide the basis for standardization in international comparative blood pressure surveys.