5. Development of the ALL Background questionnaire

The ALL Background Questionnaire (BQ) was designed through a collaborative effort by members of the International Study Team, National Study Managers (NSMs), and individual experts. The final version of the questionnaire was the result of extensive consultation, testing, qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the pilot survey instrument. The overall development of measures of adult education and training benefited greatly from work done by the PEL sub-group of the OECD's INES network (led by Anna Borkowsky of Switzerland). The numeracy assessment team, lead by Iddo Gal, also consulted on numeracy-oriented measures included in the BQ. Westat in the United States led the work on determining appropriate measures of health and well-being. Two subgroups of NSMs, each representing six countries, worked on the initial design of adult education indicators and social capital indicators. Expert consultations were on-going with Stan Jones. The questionnaire benefited from comments from Albert Tuijnman, Emmanuel Boudard, Tom Healy, Paul Reed, and Gordon Darkenwald.

The BQ process began at the first National Study Managers Meeting in September of 1999. In preparation for this meeting, Westat submitted a series of recommended changes to the IALS background questionnaire and several experts' suggestions for content development/improvement were included in the meeting documentation package. Based on these recommendations, a first draft BQ was designed for discussion at a major BQ conference held in March 2000 in Ottawa, Canada. NSMs and experts gathered to discuss the proposed BQ content. At this conference, the structure of question types - internationally required, internationally optional, and nationally required - was agreed upon, several questions were designated to those categories, international coding structures were determined and each module was reviewed in detail. Two working groups (representing 6 different countries in each group) were formed to improve the content in two domains - ‘Participation in Education and Learning’ and ‘Social Capital’. Following the conference, a table outlining all proposed changes and recommendations for the BQ was circulated for verification and approval. A second draft BQ was created based on the comments and recommendations made at the international BQ conference. This draft was then tested in Canada and Italy. Based on the testing results, the International Study Team recommended a series of adjustments to the BQ that were presented for comment and discussion at the NSM meeting held in June 2000 in Frascati, Italy. A third draft BQ was created after the NSM meeting incorporating many of the International Study Team recommendations and comments from NSMs. This draft was circulated for comments in July 2000 and a final BQ for pilot testing was produced.