IT
Cycle II of the PIAAC survey was launched in 2018 with the participation of 31 countries worldwide, including Italy.
In Italy, data for the main survey will be collected between September 2022 and July 2023, with the involvement of around 12,000 people. This phase will be preceded by a pilot survey, which will start in April 2021 and end in July 2021.
As for Cycle I, the survey entails the administration by an interviewer of a socio-personal questionnaire (Background Questionnaire – BQ) and the performance of cognitive tests, carried out directly by the interviewee.
All survey tools, conceived by the OECD, are translated and adapted to the Italian context by the national team.
The BQ is administered by the interviewer using a tablet. Cognitive tests are carried out on tablets by people directly .
Through the BQ, information on the social and personal situation, education and training during working life, employment status and professional history, as well as more “personal” aspects, such as social attitudes and family information, is collected. A specific section of the BQ is dedicated to gathering information on the competencies used by people at work.
The cognitive tests of the second cycle, in the Italian version, relate to the spheres of literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving.
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.”
This is a core requirement for developing higher-order skills and for positive economic and social outcomes. Previous studies have shown reading literacy to be closely linked to positive outcomes at work, to social participation, and to lifelong learning.
Numeracy is defined as “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.”
Numeracy is a skill parallel to literacy, and it is important to assess how these competencies interact, since they are distributed differently across subgroups of the population.
Adaptive problem solving is defined as “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.”,
For PIAAC Cycle II Italy, together with other countries, has adhered to both the optional reading and numeracy component module, that investigate basic alphabetic and numerical skills, and the optional module dedicated to measuring people’s social and emotional skills, included in the BQ.
L'Indagine sulle competenze degli adulti in Italia nell'ambito del programma OCSE-PIAAC ciclo 2 è cofinanziata dal Programma nazionale Giovani, Donne e Lavoro FSE+ 2021-2027