Survey of Adult Skills

[kikknos]

The OECD has published its latest Survey of Adult Skills, which tracks literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills in thirty-one countries. How do you feel about where your nation placed, what do you think accounts for its standing and how would you improve the results either for your country or the others?

[Ares Land]

France comes out average -- close to the US. All in all, the results are pretty bad everywhere; even in Finland (the top scorer in the OECD) 10% of adults don't do well on literacy. It's around 23% here.

There are some very odd results in there though; I'm thinking of this, in particular:

Meanwhile, older generations, aged 44 to 54 in 2011-12, scored 30 points lower in literacy in 2022-23 (when they were 55-65 years old), a significant decline (Figure 5).

I'd love to know how they explain that. As far as I know, cognitive decline typically doesn't start that early?

[xxx]

There are some very odd results in there though; I'm thinking of this, in particular:

Meanwhile, older generations, aged 44 to 54 in 2011-12, scored 30 points lower in literacy in 2022-23 (when they were 55-65 years old), a significant decline (Figure 5).

I'd love to know how they explain that. As far as I know, cognitive decline typically doesn't start that early?

by the entry of lower population in these age groups in the period...

[Ares Land]

There are some very odd results in there though; I'm thinking of this, in particular:

Meanwhile, older generations, aged 44 to 54 in 2011-12, scored 30 points lower in literacy in 2022-23 (when they were 55-65 years old), a significant decline (Figure 5).

I'd love to know how they explain that. As far as I know, cognitive decline typically doesn't start that early?

by the entry of lower population in these age groups in the period...

What does that mean? I don't understand you.

[xxx]

migrations mean that the populations tested are not homogeneous over time...

[Ares Land]

migrations mean that the populations tested are not homogeneous over time...

Oh, that. Well, I am not interested in your racist takes. Please go away.

[xxx]

please don't pull out a garlic clove, I'm dead serious, what other explanation can you give...
(except that this age group has lost its mind... although that's the age of our politicians...)

[Linguoboy]

please don't pull out a garlic clove, I'm dead serious, what other explanation can you give...

Perhaps one that would also explain why South Korea shows almost exactly the same trend despite the fact that it was and remains far more ethnically homogeneous than France?

Take off those navy blue-coloured glasses you view every issue with and just maybe other possibilities will present themselves.

[Darren]

I like how they have to give a special note about how in Poland they faked half the interviews and didn't try in the other half so their data is useless. Makes me proud.

[Ares Land]

please don't pull out a garlic clove, I'm dead serious, what other explanation can you give...
(except that this age group has lost its mind... although that's the age of our politicians...)

Sigh. I know you're dead serious, but that's even more depressing. Not every problem can be explained by immigration. Either you're really racist or they're brainwashing you, most likely both.

There weren't enough immigrants between 2011 and 2022 to significantly affect that number. Also, check the results for France, figure 5.
This doesn't affect all age cohorts equally -- in fact performacne declines for most everyone except the youngest, but it affects 55-65 year olds way more than the rest. If this was due to immigration, it would affect all age cohorts, or the younger would be more affected.

How to explain that? I don't entirely know, but here are ideas:

To this end, the assessment was exclusively administered on digital devices (tablets). This constitutes an important innovation over the previous cycle of the survey, where respondents had the option to sit the assessment using paper-based instruments.

Which of course the eldest cohort is going to be a bit less comfortable with.

In the first cycle of the survey, the doorstep questionnaire was not available. As a result, no information was collected on adults lacking sufficient language proficiency, and their proficiency could not be estimated. The inclusion of respondents to the doorstep interview can potentially affect the comparability of results between the first and the second cycle of the survey.

That sort of survey is way outside my skills range, so maybe that sort of thing is OK -- but

The conclusion, on the OECD webside, is 'Adult skills in literacy and numeracy declining', which is the only thing most people will remember from that study, and that includes policymakers.
There's something a bit dishonest there -- drawing conclusions about a 'decline' which you can't, in fact, measure.

[xxx]

no, in fact I'm teasing you a little...
I don't have any confidence in statistics in general,
which are only very fallible tools
and serve only as a support for political spin,
to make us swallow a lot of nonsense,
or to engage in social reengineering,
which is most often harmful...
Unfortunately, there's nothing better to manage a society
that's no longer human in scale and purpose...

[Linguoboy]

no, in fact I'm teasing you a little...

Cool, the "I was only joking defence". Very demure.

In future, keep your "teasing" within the Overton window of acceptable speech on this BB, 'kay?

[xxx]

I don't practice taboo or censorship,
so self-censorship or false apology...

[Linguoboy]

I don't practice taboo or censorship,
so self-censorship or false apology...

Good for you I guess. But this is Zompist's garden party and he expects his guests to follow certain norms. Primary among these is:

Don't insult entire groups of people. That includes any ethnic group, sex, sexual preference, political party, religion, or irreligion.

(My emphasis.)

If you find yourself with an uncontrollable urge to say racist things, then this is likely not the forum for you. If you continue to post them, then the mods (me and Mark) will take action. So self-censor or you'll be shown the door.

[xxx]

um, I don't know about yours, but in my head, French isn't an ethnic group neither non-French...
but you're right, we'll pick it up again after Christmas...

[Starbeam]

It always feels like me and everyone I know have never have been asked to do these kinds of surveys

[Torco]

It always feels like me and everyone I know have never have been asked to do these kinds of surveys

and it is true! if you want to change this, i'd suggest joining an online panel. netquest is one of the big ones, but there's a bunch. most surveys are done in this way, at least where i live. which yeah, has its problems. i don't know if this one would have been done through a panel, though. but like, the whole point of sampling and weighing and the rest of it is that don't have to ask most people, but just a small sample of people. at my job we generally do 300 to 1500 cases to represent 20 million people or so.

and speaking about where i live... lmao chile is the worse country of them all. i do not believe this misrepresents us, though i'm also not sure any other latin american country, other than perhaps uruguay, would get much better results. educational systems in the third world are bad, and a vast majority of the population are the grandsons of illiterate people [educational achievement is extremely inherited, especially in highly unequal societies]. hell, *my* schools were mostly bad, and i got to experience not the best ones in the country, but maybe the 8th or 9th decile of better schools. verdaderamente somos el mejor pais de chile.

[Starbeam]

and it is true! if you want to change this, i'd suggest joining an online panel. netquest is one of the big ones, but there's a bunch. most surveys are done in this way, at least where i live. which yeah, has its problems. i don't know if this one would have been done through a panel, though. but like, the whole point of sampling and weighing and the rest of it is that don't have to ask most people, but just a small sample of people. at my job we generally do 300 to 1500 cases to represent 20 million people or so.

I understand why it would seem like a good idea to use a small sample of the population to reflect a greater whole, but in practice this always just leads to stereotypes and incomplete data. Population surveys are for the population, not some random people you found. That said, I don't think you or anyone else is a bad person for having this job. It's just kind of a foolhardy way to approach this. At the very least, I think these

Also, the United States has a larger, more sprawled population than Chile. You'd have to rely on the internet or move heaven and earth. At the very least, I think these survey groups should disclaim the limits of their results first. Anyway, do you think you could DM me some links? Don't have anything better to do and I might make some money doing surveys.

and speaking about where i live... lmao chile is the worse country of them all. i do not believe this misrepresents us, though i'm also not sure any other latin american country, other than perhaps uruguay, would get much better results. educational systems in the third world are bad, and a vast majority of the population are the grandsons of illiterate people [educational achievement is extremely inherited, especially in highly unequal societies]. hell, *my* schools were mostly bad, and i got to experience not the best ones in the country, but maybe the 8th or 9th decile of better schools. verdaderamente somos el mejor pais de chile.

First off, unless you mean the original "Cold War" sense, South America is not the third world. Second, i don't necessarily think most school systems are that useful beyond the basics of literacy and math. Granted, that basic stuff is what the survey was for, and I'm much less critical of universities and the like. Third, what do they even mean by "problem solving"? That sounds a bit broad, but maybe I'm not in the know.

[Travis B.]

First off, unless you mean the original "Cold War" sense, South America is not the third world.

In the original "Cold War" sense much of South America (except for Cuba under Castro and Chile under Allende and like) was 'first world' because it was US-aligned, actually. If by "third world" you mean developing, all of South America is "third world" except for possibly Uruguay.

Second, i don't necessarily think most school systems are that useful beyond the basics of literacy and math. Granted, that basic stuff is what the survey was for, and I'm much less critical of universities and the like. Third, what do they even mean by "problem solving"? That sounds a bit broad, but maybe I'm not in the know.

From my experience in school, school imparted a lot of knowledge that most students would not have gotten otherwise. Even I myself, who had a habit of voluntarily reading whole encyclopedias as a kid, didn't have encyclopedias at home until my family bought an encyclopedia on CD (it might have been Microsoft Encarta but I don't remember clearly).

[Torco]

okay sure, it'd be better to perform a census of the whole population, but you have any idea how expensive those are? nah, for most purposes picking people as randomly as you can is the way to go.

see this is basically how the logic goes: whatever traits we can think of in a population, whatever characteristics we want to measure, they're going to have a certain distribution, like some people will have a lot of it, some a little. for example, i don't know, how much they like chocolate. i sometimes enjoy really good chocolate, i know people who are suuuper into chocolate and would always want one if offered. there'll be a population distribution, whatever, say a normal gauss bell. then, if you pick enough people, and if your sample is representative in relevant aspects (for example, half women, half men, rich and poor people, tall and short people, whatever) then you'll get a decent idea of what the population, at large, is like.

and this in fact works: companies often poll people over and over on the same topics -and not the same people either, but different people- and results tend to be consistent: what brand of whatever is most remembered? that often measures consistently enough that the only explanation is that we're actually measuring a real trait to some accuracy that's near 3, 5, 7 percent.

i don't know what panels operate in the us, but like, there's a lot of programs to answer surveys get points you can redeem for home appliances. lemme check... na, apparently netquest works by invitation only ? [and that's a good thing for pollers, cause you want your sample to be more or less representative: the more self-selected it is, the more biased your results] but like... this ? https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/fi ... s-for-jobs

First off, unless you mean the original "Cold War" sense, South America is not the third world. Second, i don't necessarily think most school systems are that useful beyond the basics of literacy and math. Granted, that basic stuff is what the survey was for, and I'm much less critical of universities and the like. Third, what do they even mean by "problem solving"? That sounds a bit broad, but maybe I'm not in the know.

my dude, i'm well off by chile standards and i make less than us minimum wage. and chile is not that poor, have you looked at living conditions in peru? argentina has literal 50% poverty these days. check conditions in bolivia, in venezuela, in costa rica, in haiti. this is very much the third world, i assure you. and check the PISA scores, they're not great.

and yeah, third world is often used like this, no? to mean poor country?