Previous research shows that interviewers to some extent fail to expend the effort that is needed to collect high-quality survey data. We extend the idea of interviewer satisficing to a related task, in which the interviewers themselves answer survey questions. We hypothesize that interviewers who self-administer the questionnaire in a careless…

The negative consequences of truancy for individuals, schools, communities and society in the short and long term are well documented. However, empirical research on truancy often takes only the frequency of the absence into account. As a consequence, truancy research has been dominated by the comparison of characteristics of truants with…

This paper presents the results of the first survey conducted in Belgium about the interest in and knowledge of astronomy. Two samples were studied, the public at large (667 questionnaires) and students (2589 questionnaires), but the results are generally similar in both samples. We evaluated people's interest, main information source and…

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function…

In this paper an analysis is carried out whether objective tests and subjective self-assessments in international large-scale studies yield similar results when looking at cross-national differences in the effects of skills on earnings, and skills patterns across countries, fields of study and gender. The findings indicate that subjective skills…

The bulk of scholarship on multicultural education continues to focus exclusively on U.S. education. Previous studies published in this field also have focused largely on topics that are considered relevant for the United States, whereas little attention has been paid to topics that are less problematized in the United States. In this mixed-method…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider trust as an important relational source in schools by exploring whether trust lowers teacher burnout. The authors examine how trust relationships with different school parties such as the principal relate to distinct dimensions of teacher burnout. The authors further analyze whether school-level…

The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) has been planned as an ongoing program of assessment. The first cycle of the assessment has involved two "rounds." The first round, which is covered by this report, took place over the period of January 2008-October 2013. The main features of the first cycle of…

In exchange for the autonomy they have been granted, schools are required to evaluate the quality of the education they provide. Self-evaluation initiatives are a frequently chosen method. The present article reveals the underlying processes which have an impact on the results of such self-evaluations. It is based on research which demonstrates…

The study from which this article derives investigated some dominant assumptions of parent support policies and programmes, and suggests new possibilities for the conceptualization of the relations between parents and such policies, inspired by the possibilities of dialogical spaces and "relational citizenship". Parent support programmes…

From June to November 2003 an exploratory survey was made of the assessment of written English in a small sample of English language degrees in Europe. All programmes had similar components, the study of English language and literature, cultural or area studies, and English language development. Some involved the study of another language.…

The purpose of this study was to examine (a) whether adolescents' leisure-time sports participation is socially stratified, and (b) whether possible stratification patterns have changed over the last decades. The population for the study consisted of four random samples of high school boys and girls in Flanders who were exposed to a standardized…