A separate international team developed the background questionnaires. In total representatives of some 35 countries, representing 20 languages, participated in the item writing activity.

Small scale piloting, in pairs of countries, failed to yield measures of sufficient reliability for:

• practical cognition
• teamwork, and,
• information and communication on technology

Measures of attitudes to teamwork and familiarity and use of ICT's were incorporated into the ALL Pilot background questionnaires but only the questions pertaining to the familiarity and use of ICT were retained for the main ALL study.

Large scale piloting by countries participating in the first round of ALL collection provides evidence that the ALL instruments yield valid, reliable, comparable and policy relevant data.

Six countries - Bermuda, Canada, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the United States - participated in the first round of ALL data collection, fielding the ALL pilot study in 2002 and the main data collection in the first and second quarters of 2003. The Mexican state of Nuevo Leon fielded in 2003, a hybrid assessment that employed the IALS assessment and the ALL background questionnaire.