Survey of Adult Skills – Reader's Companion

4. The background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills

Abstract

This chapter describes the background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. This questionnaire collects a wealth of information on respondents, including demographics, educational attainment, labour-force status and job characteristics, skills use, information on the working environment, non-economic outcomes, and social and emotional skills.

The background questionnaire (BQ) for the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills collects comprehensive information designed to support the survey’s major analytical objectives, which were to:

• describe the proficiency in key information-processing skills for certain subgroups of the adult population

• identify which factors are associated with the acquisition, development, maintenance and loss of proficiency over the lifespan

• highlight how proficiency in information-processing skills is related to economic and non-economic outcomes

• investigate how social and technological changes influence the practice and relevance of information-processing skills.

The background questionnaire for the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills is based on to the one used in the first cycle of the survey (OECD, 2011[1]). A Background Questionnaire Expert Group,1 composed of internationally renowned academics specialising in labour economics, the economics of education and sociology, revised the questionnaire used in the first cycle. The main objectives of this revision were to update the questions and make them more relevant for current societal and work environments, while maintaining a high degree of comparability with the first cycle to allow for analysis over time.

Revisions to the questionnaire mainly concerned adapting it to new international standards, such as the International Standard Classification of Education 2011 (ISCED); improving the questions in light of new research and experience with data analysis from the first cycle of the survey; adapting the questions to better reflect the present environment, particularly in light of technological changes in the last decade; and introducing questions to measure concepts not measured in the first cycle.

The principles guiding the selection of items to be included in the questionnaire have not fundamentally changed since the first cycle. Other than being relevant to the policy questions that the Survey of Adult Skills aims to address, items were expected to have an established relationship to skills in the theoretical and empirical literature, either as determinants or as outcomes of skills. They also needed to have good measurement properties in terms of reliability and validity and, ideally, be able to maintain that over time. Efforts were made to ensure they had comparable meanings across groups and countries after careful translation and adaptation, and that they were comparable with other existing international surveys as far as possible. Questions also needed to be relevant to a majority of adult respondents.

The questionnaire items were all translated and adapted to reflect the national contexts of participants. This step was particularly important in domains such as educational attainment and participation in education and training, given the large differences in the structure of education systems across countries and economies. As far as possible, efforts were made to align the questions to existing national protocols, such as those for collecting information on labour-force participation and employment, so that the results from the Survey of Adult Skills are as comparable as possible with official national statistics. Efforts were then made to recode the raw information and produce derived variables that allow valid international comparisons to be made. In particular, information was coded in accordance with the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 2011) for educational qualifications, the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC Rev 4) for industry types and International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO 2008) for occupations.

Participating countries and economies also had the opportunity to add a small number of “national” questions to their versions of the background questionnaire to collect information on issues that they judged particularly relevant or important in their local contexts.

The background questionnaire for the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills collected information in six main areas:

• demographic characteristics and background of respondents

• educational attainment and participation in education and training

• labour-force status and employment

• the use of skills and the working environment

• social and emotional skills

• non-economic outcomes.

The information collected in each of these areas is described in more detail below, together with the rationale for including it in the questionnaire.

Demographic characteristics and background of respondents

Understanding the distribution of proficiency across subgroups of the adult population is one of the major objectives of the Survey of Adult Skills. To this end, the background questionnaire collects information on basic demographic variables like gender and age, as well as on household and family structure. All these variables are potentially important for explaining observed proficiency and are useful for characterising inequality across groups.

The background questionnaire also contains several questions on the economic and social background of participants. These include their language background, immigration status, the education and occupational levels of their parents (when the respondent was 14 years old) and their family’s cultural capital (Table 4.1). An important reason for including these retrospective questions is that they can be considered to have an influence on individual’s choices about their education, which are normally made after people complete mandatory school.

Table 4.1. Information collected on demographic characteristics and backgrounds

Domain	Specific data items	BQ section
Demographics	Year and month of birth, gender, country of birth.	A1-A3
Household and family structure	Number of persons in household, living with spouse or partner, activity of spouse/partner, number and age of children.	J1-J3
Language background	First and second languages spoken during childhood, the language currently spoken at home.	A4
Immigration status	Age at migration, country of birth of parents.	A3
Home environment at age 14	Number of books at home, parents’ or guardians’ occupation and highest level of education, place of residence (urban versus rural), household composition and family structure.	J4-J9

Educational attainment and participation in training activities

There is a complex relationship between education and training activities, whether formal or non-formal,2 and proficiency in the information-processing skills measured by the Survey of Adult Skills. Literacy, numeracy and problem solving are partly developed through participation in schooling and other post-school education and training activities (e.g. vocational education and training, university, and workplace-based learning). At the same time, greater skills proficiency related to higher innate cognitive ability can affect whether individuals choose to participate in education and training beyond compulsory schooling.

Given the importance of education for skills proficiency and the strong policy interest in understanding the relationship between skills and participation in formal education, the background questionnaire collects extensive information on participants’ educational experience. Respondents are asked to report the highest level of education they have completed and other lower-level qualifications they have attained, in order to better understand the pathways they followed through the education system. Information on educational pathways is an important new element of the BQ for the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. Respondents are also asked whether they are currently enrolled in education and whether they have dropped out of a course of study before completing it.

As the Survey of Adult Skills targets the adult population aged 16-65, many respondents have long left formal education. However, this does not mean they have stopped learning and improving their skills. In the current context, characterised by rapid technological change and population ageing, adult education and learning are at the core of the policy discourse, and continuing participation in (formal or non-formal) adult training is an important determinant of the evolution of skills proficiency over the course of people’s lives. For all these reasons, the background questionnaire contains a much richer set of questions than in the first cycle of the survey on participation in training activities in the 12 months preceding the interview (Table 4.2).

Table 4.2. Information collected on education experience and current training activities

Domain	Specific data items	BQ section
Educational attainment and pathways	Highest qualification (ISCED), the country where this qualification was obtained, the field of study of the highest qualification, age when the highest qualification was obtained, and other qualifications.	B1-B4
Current education	Current participation in formal education (level and field of study).	B5
Incomplete education	Incomplete formal qualification, level of incomplete formal qualification, the age at which formal qualification was interrupted.	B6
Training activities	Participation in training activities in the last 12 months or any point, number of training activities.	B8
Context of most recent training activity	Field of activity, activity mainly job-related, the main reason for participation, took place in or outside working hours, the focus of activity, in person or remote, employment status at the time of participation, related to the digital transformation, perception of usefulness, delivery of a certificate, duration, funding sources.	B9-B21
Barriers to undertaking education and training	Wanted to participate in training activities in the last 12 months but did not, reasons preventing participation.	B22-B23

Labour-force status, work history and job characteristics

The relationships between skills and labour-market outcomes, such as employment, income and job characteristics, are central to the Survey of Adult Skills. According to human capital theory, cognitive skills are expected to be an important component of individual productivity, and observing how they are rewarded in the labour market constitutes prima facie evidence of their relevance and importance.

The central role of the relationship between skills and labour-market outcomes is reflected in the choice of instruments chosen to measure income and employment status, whose quality and level of detail are on a par with those used in labour-force surveys. The information collected on labour-force status, work history and job characteristics is presented in Table 4.3.

Since skills can affect (and can be affected by) job transitions and changes in the content of people’s jobs, the questionnaire also gathers some information on the evolution of workers’ careers. This is why respondents are asked about job tenure, how their position with their current employer has evolved and how long they have been in the labour market. Similarly, unemployed individuals are asked about the characteristics of their most recent job if they have been employed in the past five years.

Job characteristics and the actual content of jobs in terms of the tasks workers need to perform are crucial factors affecting incentives to maintain or invest in skills. They are also crucial information for analysing whether labour-market institutions are allocating workers to jobs efficiently. This is why the background questionnaire of the Survey of Adult Skills contains detailed information on the use of skills at work (as well as in everyday life) and the characteristics of the working environment, as discussed below.

Table 4.3. Information collected on labour-force status, work history and job characteristics

Domain	Specific data items	BQ section
Current activity	Labour-force status (International Labour Organization definition), main current activity.	C1-C5
Work history	Ever worked, had paid work in the last 12 months, age at which stopped working (if currently unemployed), total time in employment, received benefits in the last 12 months (unemployment, disability, sickness or retirement), number of employers in the last five years.	C6-C12
Current job	Sector of industry (ISIC) and occupation (ISCO), employed or self-employed, age at which started working with current employer, most important activities, change of position/tasks/unit (while remaining with the same employer) , age started with current employer, establishment size, the evolution of the number of employees, part of a larger organisation, (if self-employed) number of employees, management or supervisory responsibilities, number of subordinates, type of employment contract, usual working hours, qualification and experience required to get this job and satisfactorily perform the duties, level of job satisfaction, gross wage or salary, the existence of bonuses, (if self-employed) earnings from business.	D1-D16
Most recent job (if unemployed)	Sector of industry (ISIC) and occupation (ISCO), most important activities, employed or self-employed, date when started last employment, establishment size, part of a larger organisation, (if self-employed) number of employees, management of supervisory responsibilities, number of subordinates, type of employment contract, usual working hours, qualification required to get this job, the main reason for leaving last job.	E1-E11

The use of skills and the working environment

The background questionnaire collects data on how often respondents engage with tasks that require reading, writing and numeracy skills and the use of technology, both at work and in everyday life. Respondents are asked about how often they engage at work with activities requiring other skills not related to information processing but relevant to many jobs. These include physical and manual skills or people-centred skills such as the ability to co-operate with colleagues, manage people, or negotiate and influence others.

Information on how often respondents engage with certain tasks should not be interpreted as evidence of their proficiency in the underlying skills required to perform them. Such interpretation would only be valid if it were the case that job tasks are only assigned to people capable of carrying them out and that people with greater levels of a particular skill are more likely to perform tasks that require that skill frequently.

The BQ attempted to cover a diverse range of tasks, especially those related to reading, writing and numeracy. Some of these tasks are arguably more complex or difficult than others, thus requiring higher levels of underlying ability. However, the questions do not explicitly ask how complex or difficult the tasks are, how critical or important they are to overall performance on the job, nor whether respondents can normally complete those tasks successfully. Therefore, information on skills use should be interpreted primarily as evidence about the skill content of respondents’ job and as a proxy for the skills demanded in the workplace.

This information on the skills and task contents of individual jobs is complemented by questions that aim to understand better the broader working environment in which jobs are performed. These questions refer more to organisational norms rather than actual practices carried out by individual workers.

The role of literacy and numeracy practices in maintaining and developing skills

The Survey of Adult Skills seeks not only to describe the level and distribution of proficiency in the skills it measures but also to provide information on factors associated with acquiring, maintaining and developing these skills and their outcomes. Proficiency in cognitive skills, such as literacy and numeracy, are not fixed for life, and life paths, interests and individual circumstances affect how skills are gained and lost. Adults enhance or maintain their skills by engaging in literacy and numeracy practices and using information and communication technologies (ICT) at work and in everyday life. Proficiency and practice are mutually reinforcing, with practice positively affecting the level of proficiency and proficiency having a positive impact on practice.

Table 4.4 provides an overview of the clusters of tasks related to cognitive skills and technology about which information is collected in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. A cluster comprises several types of tasks, for which respondent reports their frequency of use. These clusters differentiate between work (section F) and everyday life (section G) contexts. This differentiation acknowledges the relevance of skills for different social functions. The tasks are chosen to cover the diversity of use cases in each context (work and everyday life) and normally, although not always, differ according to the context.3

Table 4.4. Information collected on skills use at work and in everyday life

Task cluster	Component activities at work	Component activities in everyday life	BQ section
Cognitive skills
Reading	Read directions or instructions; letters, memos or e-mails; articles in newspapers, magazines or newsletters; manuals or reference materials; bills, invoices, or bank or financial statements.		F1	G1
	Read books or articles in professional journals or scholarly publications.	Read books, fiction or non-fiction.	F1	G1
Writing	Write letters, memos or e-mails; write reports or articles; fill in forms.		F2	G2
Numeracy	Make calculations such as on prices, costs or quantities; read and prepare charts, graphs or tables; undertake measurements.		F3	G3
	Use maps, plans or GPS for finding directions and locations; use advanced mathematics or statistics.	Use information to make financial decisions; use mathematics, such as formulas or mathematical rules.	F3	G3
Technology
ICT general use	Experience with computer in job.	Ever used a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer outside of work. Frequency of use.	F4	G4-G5
ICT skills	Use a computer or digital device to communicate with others; to access information.		F5	G6
	Use a computer or digital device to create or edit electronic documents, spreadsheets or presentations; to use specialised software; to use a programming language.	Use a computer or digital device for entertainment or leisure; for online banking or e-commerce; to manage your personal life.	F5	G6

Comparative information on a broader range of tasks performed on the job

Cognitive information-processing skills like literacy, numeracy and problem solving are just one subset (although arguably a fundamental one) of the many different generic skills and attributes that are valued in the labour market and can increase employability. A range of more specialised skills, such as being able to work collaboratively, or communication or manual skills, are also important in the modern workplace. A direct comparative assessment of these types of skills is a complex endeavour that cannot be undertaken in a survey like the Survey of Adult Skills. Therefore, the choice was made to ask respondents about the different types of generic tasks they perform in their jobs. This information can then be used to infer the skills required to perform these tasks. This approach was pioneered in the UK Skills Survey and is known as the Jobs Requirement Approach (Felstead et al., 2007[2]).

Table 4.5 provides an overview of the clusters of work-related tasks covered in the Survey of Adult Skills. As with the questions on skills use at work and in everyday life, respondents are asked how often they engage with each task.

Table 4.5. Information collected on tasks performed at work

Activity cluster	Component activities at work	BQ section
Co-operation	Co-operating or collaborating with co-workers	H1
Influence	Influencing or persuading people; negotiating with people	H5
Problem solving	Solving simple (less than 5 minutes) and complex problems (more than 30 minutes)	H6
Self-direction	Planning your own activities; organising your own time	H4
Learning at work	Learning new things, learning-by-doing process, keeping up to date with new products or services	H9
Horizontal interaction	Sharing work-related information; teaching or training people; giving presentations	H3
Client interaction	Dealing directly with people who are not employees	H3
Physical skills	Working physically for a long period	H7
Manual skills	Using hands or fingers for precision work	H7

Box 4.1. Using Item Response Theory to derive indicators of skills use

Item Response Theory (IRT) is a methodology that combines multiple items (i.e. answers to multiple-choice questions) from a questionnaire or an assessment exercise to derive measures of an underlying unobservable trait. This methodology is used to estimate literacy, numeracy and problem-solving proficiency in the Survey of Adult Skills direct assessment and also to derive a summary index of how frequently individuals use certain skills at work and/or in their daily lives.

The items in the background questionnaire of the Survey of Adult Skills elicit information about skills use are all ordered multiple-choice items where each consecutive alternative indicates a greater frequency of performing a certain task, ranging from 1 (never performing that task) to 5 (performing the task every day). With this type of item, the most appropriate IRT model is the generalised partial credit model, which estimates the latent trait based on the answers to a group of items associated with that trait. This latent construct is assumed to be unidimensional. The estimated model parameters map each level on the latent scale to the probability of choosing a specific alternative among the possible choices over the immediate precedent. The resulting scale is a continuous one-dimensional construct that explains the covariance among the item responses: people with a higher level on the derived scale have a higher probability of frequently performing the task detailed in a given item.

From the background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills, the following skills use indices are computed using IRT and included in its Public Use File:

• reading (at work and in everyday life)

• writing (at work and in everyday life)

• numeracy (at work and in everyday life)

• ICT (at work and in everyday life)

• task discretion (at work only)

• learning (at work only)

• influencing skills (at work only).

The IRT methodology can only be applied when a sufficient number of items represent the underlying trait. This was not the case for many activity clusters, such as using physical skills or the frequency of co-operating with co-workers. In these cases, researchers must rely on direct measures of skills use based on discrete variables that take five possible values.

All the IRT-derived indices are continuous variables which should be interpreted as representing the level of use of the underlying skill. For ease of comparison, they have all been standardised to have a mean of 2 and a standard deviation of 1 across the pooled sample of respondents in all participating countries and economies.

While the careful survey design guarantees that results can be meaningfully compared across countries and economies, the standardisation of the IRT-derived skills use indices implies that comparisons across skills domains should only be taken as suggestive. Indeed, such comparisons are problematic for reasons beyond the choice of the indicators or the reported metric, as skills are often conceptually different notions and the forms of their interplay are difficult to ascertain.

When combined with information on the use of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills at work, these questions help provide a detailed picture of the skills required for a job. Knowing which tasks workers engage with more often is informative about which skills are demanded in the labour market. This provides a useful complement to the information on skill supply that can be derived from the direct assessment of literacy, numeracy and problem solving. Such an approach is also aligned with the so-called “task approach” to labour markets, which has been extensively used in the recent academic literature to analyse changes in the demand for labour in response to shocks like globalisation and technological changes (Autor, Levy and Murnane, 2003[3]; Autor, 2013[4]; Lassébie and Quintini, 2022[5]).

Qualifications and skills mismatches

An important goal of the Survey of Adult Skills is to inform policy makers about how effectively skills are being used. Workers may lack the skills needed to perform their jobs satisfactorily or be employed in jobs that do not allow them to put the skills they have to good and productive use. Such mismatches are to some extent inevitable, but efforts can be made to minimise them as much as possible, as they tend to reduce economic productivity and individual welfare.

Skills mismatches can have a negative impact on economic growth through increasing labour costs, reducing productivity, slowing technology adoption and ultimately lowering output (OECD, 2016[6]; Adalet McGowan and Andrews, 2017[7]). Mismatched individuals also face higher risks of unemployment, and lower wages and job satisfaction (Allen and van der Velden, 2001[8]; OECD, 2016[6]; Quintini, 2011[9])

Data from the first cycle of the Survey of Adult Skills have provided an important contribution to improving the measurement of skills mismatch (Pellizzari and Fichen, 2017[10]; Pérez Rodríguez et al., 2023[11]; OECD, 2014[12]). In particular, the Survey of Adult Skills data allow us to go beyond traditional measures of self-reported mismatches, combining them with actual information on skills measured through its assessment.

The background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills continues to include some questions on self-reported qualification and subjective skills mismatches, improving on the questionnaire used in the first cycle by asking respondents about which particular skills they feel they are under-skilled, over-skilled or well-matched in (Table 4.6).

Table 4.6. Information collected on aspects of qualifications and skills mismatches

Domain	Specific data items	BQ section
Subjective skills mismatch	Whether the respondent feels over-skilled, well-matched or under-skilled, and for which skills this evaluation would apply	H19
Match of qualifications to job requirements	Educational qualification and work experience needed to get their current job	D12

Working environment and organisational practices

Information on the skills and task content of individual jobs is complemented by questions that aim to create a better understanding of the wider working environment in which jobs are performed.

Information on tasks performed on the job helps describe job content but leaves aside the working environment in which these practices occur. The background questionnaire includes items to describe organisational norms and practices under which individual job tasks are performed (Table 4.7). How work is organised can have important consequences for productivity and workers’ well-being (Bloom et al., 2014[13]). In the context of the Survey of Adult Skills, particular interest lies in capturing so-called high-performance work practices (such as the presence of teamwork, social support and knowledge sharing, having well-defined objectives, and continuous feedback and rewards for good performance) that are often thought to favour a better allocation of skills to tasks and better incentives for workers to invest in developing their skills.

Another important aspect that the Survey of Adult Skills aims to capture is how the working environment has evolved in recent years, how these changes have affected skills requirements and skills policies, and whether workers have been supported in the context of such changes.

Table 4.7. Information collected on the working environment

Domain		Specific data items	BQ section
Task discretion		Respondent has control over the sequence of tasks, speed of work, working hours or how the work is done	H8
Work pressure		Working to tight deadlines or at a very high speed	H12
Work format		Short repetitive tasks	H17
Changes in the working environment		Changes in the last three years to: machinery, information and communication, working methods and practices, outsourcing and relocation, products or services, contact with clients. Existence of employer-supported training	H18
Optional	Teamwork	The presence of a team leader, the influence of team members on leader selection, tasks and work targets	H2
	Participation in decision-making	Able to apply own ideas in work, involved in improving the work organisation or work processes	H14
	Social support and knowledge sharing	Receive assistance from supervisor or manager, receive assistance from co-workers, helping co-workers to learn new things	H10, H13

Note: The optional questions on the working environment were asked in Austria, the Flemish Region (Belgium), Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, England (United Kingdom), and the United States.

The PIAAC Employer Module

The PIAAC Employer Module on Skills Gaps assesses skill gaps in the employed workforce, explores the prevalence and nature of these gaps, and collects data on the strategies used by enterprises to address them. Skill gaps occur when the skills of employees exceed or fall short of the requirements of their jobs under current market conditions. This includes qualification mismatches, where an employee’s qualifications do not meet the requirements of the job, and field-of-study mismatches, where an employee’s qualifications are in a different field to that required by the job. These gaps have significant economic consequences, including lower earnings and reduced job satisfaction for individuals, as well as lower productivity and slower growth for economies.

The Survey of Adult Skills and the PIAAC Employer Module are conceptually linked. While the former is a household survey collecting information from employees, the latter is addressed to and collects information from employers. This allows data on skills mismatches from both employer and employee perspectives to be compared and enhances the richness and accuracy of the insights collected.

The questionnaire used in the Employer Module consists of a core part, an essential part and a set of optional items. The core includes five items on skill gaps, the actions put in place by the enterprise to address them and any recent changes at enterprise level (Q1 to Q5). The essential part includes questions on the background of the enterprise (Q6 to Q10), such as sector, location, size and age (Table 4.8). These are needed to contextualise answers to the module and to link it to other data sources. The optional questions (QA1 to QE2) explore other policy-relevant characteristics of the enterprise, such as its ability to innovate, its work and organisational practices, its difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, and its employees' participation in training. OECD (2024[14]) provide an overview of the optional questions implemented by countries and economies.

At a conceptual level, the alignment between the Employer Module and the Survey of Adult Skills is achieved by ensuring the concepts of skills and training used in both questionnaires are consistent. This includes strict correspondence in concept and wording for questions in the core of the Employer Module, ensuring that the types of skills and macro trends measured are identical. The same applies to questions in the essential part of the module. Data collected through the Employer Module and the Survey of Adult Skills background questionnaire can also be statistically linked by merging data from both surveys at a pre-determined level of aggregation, typically industry and enterprise size, to create a single dataset for subsequent analysis. For a more detailed description of the relationship and the mapping of survey items in both questionnaires see Marcolin and Quintini (2023[15]). For more technical details on the survey see OECD (2024[14]).

Although the Employer Module was developed as a stand-alone survey, the first iteration was administered as an add-on to the 2020 wave of the European Continuing Vocational Training Survey (CVTS 6). The module was administered in five European countries: Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the Slovak Republic in 2021 and 2022.

Table 4.8. Information collected through the Employer Module

Domain		Specific data items	BQ section
Core	Extent of skill gap	Share of employees not well matched to their job	Q1
	Type of skill gap	Type of skills where gap exists	Q2
	Measures to address skill gap	Type of measures taken by enterprise to address skill gap	Q3
	Changes in the operational environment	Changes to machinery, IT technologies and processes, working methods and organisational practices, outsourcing practices, products and services, client or customer contact	Q4
	Training provision	Training provided to support employees through changes	Q5
Essential	Location	Postcode of enterprise	Q6
	Economic activity	Sector of economic activity	Q7
	Company size	Number of persons employed	Q8
	Company growth	Change to number of persons employed	Q9
	Age of company	Year of creation of enterprise	Q10

Social and emotional skills

Social and emotional skills cover a range of personal attributes related to how individuals perceive themselves and how much they can regulate and manage their thoughts and behaviour; they are important for achieving goals, working with others and managing emotions (OECD, 2015[16]). They are also known as non-cognitive skills, soft skills or character skills. They are typically distinguished from cognitive skills and information-processing skills in the sense that they are not normally measured through achievement or IQ tests; this does not imply, however, that the manifestation of these skills does not involve any kind of cognitive activity (Kankaraš, 2017[17]). These skills include aspects of individual personality and other important attributes, dispositions and beliefs such as motives, attitudes, values, self-perceptions, temperament and social competencies.

Social and emotional skills are generally recognised as an important component of the bundle of knowledge, skills and attributes that constitute an individual’s human capital and are increasingly being introduced in international and national frameworks setting out objectives for skills development. They have been shown to be related to important work and life outcomes, often through the impact they have on building up cognitive skills through formal education (Heckman and Kautz, 2012[18]; Kautz et al., 2014[19]). Recent evidence shows that modern labour markets increasingly reward social and emotional skills (Deming, 2017[20]).

The background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills includes a self-assessment of social and emotional skills using the Big Five Inventory (Soto and John, 2017[21]), as well as a question eliciting patience. Patience relates to the disposition to invest in the future, which is essential in learning. The Big Five framework is the most comprehensive and well-validated framework for understanding social and emotional skills. It specifies five higher-order dimensions (factors), each of which can be further divided in more narrow traits or “facets”, covering many of the aspects of non-cognitive skills and personal attributes identified as relevant to labour-market success and broader social functioning.

The module on social and emotional skills was optional. Two countries (Japan and the United States) decided not to administer it while 16 countries and economies decided to use a shorter version of the inventory that only measures the five domains and not the facets (Table 4.9).

Table 4.9. Information collected on social and emotional skills

Constructs	Domains	Facets	BQ section
Big Five	Open-mindedness	Intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, creative imagination	K
	Conscientiousness	Productiveness, responsibility, organisation
	Extraversion	Energy level, sociability, assertiveness
	Agreeableness	Respectfulness, trust, compassion
	Emotional stability	Anxiety, emotional volatility, depression
Patience	Willingness to give up something now to benefit from more in the future		I4

Note: Japan and the United States did not administer Section K of the background questionnaire. Austria, the Flemish Region (Belgium), Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Sweden Switzerland and England (United Kingdom) administered the BFI-2XS version of the inventory (15 items in total) that only allows to assess the five domains. Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Spain administered the BFI-2S version (30 items in total) that allows to collect information on the facets (on top of the domains).

Box 4.2. Deriving scores for social and emotional skills

Social and emotional skills are latent constructs measured through a set of items, all assumed to be empirical manifestations of the underlying trait. The items in the Big Five Inventory (BFI) all ask respondents the extent to which they agree with a particular statement about themselves. The degree of agreement is expressed on a 5-point Likert scale, where 1 means strongly disagreeing with the sentence and 5 means strongly agreeing with it.

The number of items for each domain or facet is relatively small, as the choice was made to keep the questionnaire as short as possible in order to avoid an excessive burden on respondents. The longer BFI-2S instrument has only two items per facet and six per domain. The shorter BFI-2XS instrument has three items per domain. This makes it challenging to apply the IRT modelling strategy employed to derive skills use indices (Box 4.1). For this reason, the choice was made to estimate scores by taking a simple average of the answers given to the battery of items representing a specific domain or facet. This relies on the assumption that each item is equally related to the underlying construct, while IRT or latent factor models allow each item to contribute differently to the final score.

For countries and economies that administered the longer BFI-2S instrument, two scores for each domain are estimated: one based on the three items that are in common with the BFI-2XS instrument (for better comparability with the countries and economies that administered the shorter instrument), and one based on all six items related to a given domain in the BFI-2S.

These scores are then standardised to have an equal mean and an equal variance within all countries and economies. Cultural and linguistic differences often result in similar questions being interpreted differently in different countries and economies. As a result, scalar invariance is often not achieved, meaning that it would be incorrect to compare average scores and conclude that residents in a given country are more extroverted or more open-minded than residents of a different country. However, metric invariance implies that each item is similarly related to the underlying construct across countries. It is then possible to examine how each domain or facet is correlated with other variables, and these correlations can be validly compared across countries and economies.

Non-economic outcomes

As well as the impact of proficiency in information-processing skills on labour-market outcomes such as employment and income, there is a growing interest in the relationship of proficiency to other outcomes that describe individuals’ overall well-being or how they perceive themselves as citizens. The Survey of Adult Skills collects information on respondents’ beliefs about society and the political process, participation in voluntary activities, and their self-reported health status. A measure of overall life satisfaction was introduced in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills (Table 4.10).

Table 4.10. Information collected on non-economic outcomes

Domain	Specific data items	BQ section
Trust	Trust in others, perception of others’ behaviour towards self	I1
Political efficacy	Influence on the political process	I1
Volunteering	Frequency of voluntary work in the past 12 months	I2
Health status	Self-assessed health status	I3
Life satisfaction	Self-assessed life satisfaction	I5

References

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Notes

← 1.  The composition of the Background Questionnaire Expert Group is reported in Annex B.

← 2.  Formal education and training refers to activities that are institutionalised, intentional and planned through public organisations and recognised private bodies. Non-formal education is also institutionalised, intentional and planned by an education provider but leads to qualifications that are not recognised by national educational authorities and can also lead to no qualifications at all. Informal learning takes place outside of institutionalised settings and arises from the learner’s involvement in activities that are not undertaken with a learning purpose in mind.

← 3.  In the first cycle of the Survey of Adult Skills, the same questions were asked to elicit use of skills at work and in everyday life.