The Assessment Frameworks for Cycle 2 of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies
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The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) represents a comprehensive international comparative assessment of the information processing skills of adults vital for the full participation in social and economic life in the 21st century. PIAAC is now in its second cycle and continues a series of international assessments of adult skills that began in the mid-1990s with the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).
The Assessment Frameworks for Cycle 2 of PIAAC provide an essential background for understanding the skills assessed by the PIAAC assessment and for interpreting the results of the study. The Assessment Frameworks define and describe the skills assessed in the study – literacy, numeracy and problem solving – and outline the key features of the assessment of these skills. In addition, the relationship between Cycle 2 of PIAAC and previous assessments of these skills among the adult population is explained and an overview is provided of the changes that have occurred in the conceptualisation of these skills in the different international assessments of adult skills implemented over the last two decades.
PIAAC Cycle 2 assessment framework: Literacy
Literacy skills play an essential part in adults' personal, social and professional life. In addition, the spread of digital technologies further emphasises the importance of reading literacy. As a set of cognitive abilities, literacy involves: accessing texts, or passages within texts, that match readers' tasks and needs; understanding the literal contents of text(s) and drawing adequate inferences both within and across texts; and evaluating texts and their sources for accuracy, soundness, and relevance, as well as reflecting on authors' purposes and strategies. The PIAAC assessment of literacy draws from a broad range of contexts and text types, from personal narratives to descriptions and arguments. It is designed as a set of scenarios involving one or several texts and a set of questions using various response formats. The main factors expected to drive item difficulty and to define proficiency levels are identified in this framework document.
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