Only a very few studies to date have comprehensively assessed children's knowledge of sexuality. In this study, we examined the level of sexual knowledge among children aged 3-6 years in Finland. We analysed children's explanations of what they saw in drawings related to genital naming, conception and childbirth, safety skills, and adult sexual…

Utilizing the Survey of Adult Skills from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the OECD database, this study investigates the role of gender inequality and public social spending in the gender gap in Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) risk across various age cohorts. The research identifies a…

Victimization during school years can have detrimental effects on individuals' adjustment, lasting even into adulthood. In the current study, we examine whether there is an indirect effect of victimization on adult depression and aggression, via sad and angry rumination about past victimization. Participants included 1,319 Finnish individuals…

Information Systems education has been concerned with student recruitment and diversity. We asked 123 students in an introductory course why they had chosen the Information Technology field. The course provided an opportunity to inquire the motivation of a diverse set of students as the course is open to anyone. We wanted to learn about our…

We assess the relationship between general literacy skills and health status by analysing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an international survey of about 250,000 adults aged 16-65 years conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2011-15 in 33…

The high dependence on technology for economic activities in developed countries stresses the importance of lifelong learning in order to equip adult workers with the skills required to perform work related tasks, and also increase labor force participation. We use data from the 2012/2014 Program for the International Assessment of Adult…

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly,…

Compassion is known to predict prosocial behavior and moral judgments related to harm. Despite the centrality of compassion to social life, factors predicting adulthood compassion are largely unknown. We examined whether qualities of parent-child-relationship, namely, emotional warmth and acceptance, predict offspring compassion decades later in…

Numeracy and literacy skills have become increasingly important in modern labour markets. The large gender differences that several studies have identified have therefore sparked considerable attention among researchers and policy makers. Little is known about the moment in which such gaps emerge, how they evolve and if their evolution differs…

Saccade latency is widely used across infant psychology to investigate infants' understanding of events. Interpreting particular latency values requires knowledge of standard saccadic RTs, but there is no consensus as to typical values. This study provides standard estimates of infants' (n = 194, ages 9 to 15 months) saccadic RTs under a range of…

For many young people, youth clubs constitute a key instrument for learning outside the school curriculum. In this article, we scrutinise Finnish youth clubs empirically as spaces of non-formal learning from the perspectives of both professional youth workers and young people themselves. We propose that youth workers tend to present an educational…

In this study, we investigated how empirical indicators of test-taking engagement can be defined, empirically validated, and used to describe group differences in the context of the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC). The approach was to distinguish between disengaged and engaged response behavior by means of…

Although the significance of age in second language acquisition is one of the most hotly debated issues in the field, very few studies have directly addressed age differences in the language learning process. The present study investigated learning in a foreign-word repetition task. Young Finnish adults and 8-year-olds repeated back Korean words.…

The "OECD Skills Studies" series aims to provide a strategic approach to skills policies. It presents OECD internationally comparable indicators and policy analysis covering issues such as: quality of education and curricula; transitions from school to work; vocational education and training (VET); employment and unemployment; innovative…

In the wake of the technological revolution that began in the last decades of the 20th century, labour market demand for information-processing and other high-level cognitive and interpersonal skills is growing substantially. The "Survey of Adult Skills," a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult…