1. Student Background Questionnaire National Research Coordinators Meeting Amsterdam, 16 - 19 October 2006

2. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Characteristics of the Student background questionnaire (StBQ) Will collect contextual data at the student level Will be administered after the international test (before StPQ) Will take about 15 minutes to complete May have similar questions as in TQ and ScQ

3. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Mapping StBQ contents to the Contextual Framework

4. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Proposed student background questions All of these draft questions are in a preliminary stage In particular questions on participation and communication may need further discussion and refinement Some questions will require national adaptations, which should be reviewed and documented (e.g. ISCED categories for parental education)

5. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Changes from CIVED Inclusion of questions on participation, communication and teaching (as factual student reports) Categories for parental and expected education with reference to international framework (ISCED) Re-writing of problematic CIVED items Addition of items (e.g. country of birth for parents)

6. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Priorities were assigned to the preliminary set of questions * Low Priority **Medium Priority ***High Priority Priorities are subject to further discussion!

7. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Student characteristics Age*** Gender*** Optional: Ethnic background (“What best describes you?”)**

8. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Home characteristics Household composition** Number of people at home* Country of birth (student, father and mother)*** Year of coming to * Language use at home***

9. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Socio-economic indicators Parental occupation (mother, father) – two questions each*** Parental education (simplified)*** Household possessions** Books at home*** Daily newspaper at home*

10. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Student activities Frequency of involvement*** –Discussions –Media use –Social activities Active civic-related participation out of school*** Frequency of active civic-related participation*** Civic-related activities at school***

11. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 School-related issues Classroom practices (climate for open classroom discussion)*** –Frequency scale instead of agreement scale! Expected education*** –ISCED levels instead of years of education (to increase precision)

12. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Issues Development of cross-nationally valid measures of active participation Feasibility of capturing data on parental occupation (validity, reliability of coding procedures) Trends from CIVED: Should some variables be kept unchanged for trend reporting? Use of “Don’t Know” categories (parental education, others?)

13. NRC Meeting Amsterdam 16-19 Oct 2006 Questions or comments?