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Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market

Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market. Measuring Skills and Skill Use: Results from the REFLEX Project. Jim Allen. SKOPE International Symposium on Skill Measurement & Certification, Oxford, 22nd September 2011. Overview. Brief description of the REFLEX Project

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Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market

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  1. Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market Measuring Skills and Skill Use: Results from the REFLEX Project Jim Allen SKOPE International Symposium on Skill Measurement & Certification, Oxford, 22nd September 2011.

  2. Overview • Brief description of the REFLEX Project • Skill measurement issues • The measures used • Some outcomes • What we have learned

  3. REFLEX Project • Financed by EU 6th Framework Program • 10 research teams from 9 countries: Austria, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK • 4 affiliated teams: Switzerland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Japan • Extension to new/candidate EU member states: HEGESCO Project (Slovenia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Turkey • Project coordination: ROA (NL) • Time schedule: 2004 – 2008

  4. Aims of the REFLEX project • To describe the demands made on higher education graduates and the resulting required competencies • To assess to what extent higher education is able to meet these demands • To assess which characteristics of higher education foster the acquisition of the relevant competencies • To assess how firms and organisations help or hinder graduates in using their competencies • To analyse the mechanisms through which employers and employees strive to fulfil their goals • To achieve these aims, we needed some measure of graduate skills/competences

  5. Skill measurement issues • Tests (direct assessments) not a viable option: • Not feasible in a self-administered web/pen-and-paper based survey • Focus on skills in the cognitive domain; neglect of ‘soft’ skills • Self-reports the only realistic option • But reliability and validity may be a problem • What actions could we take to reduce these problems?

  6. Our measurement strategy (short version) • 1. Recognize limitations of self-assessments: avoid e.g. country rankings based on measures • 2. Use outcomes to determine relative rather than absolute levels of different competences: which are available/required at the highest level? • 3. Assess own and required level on the same scale => provides a view on shortages and surpluses at work, even if the original scales contain measurement error • 4. Strive for items that were as coherent and unambiguous as possible

  7. Our competence measure (1)

  8. Our competence measure (2)

  9. Outcomes (1)

  10. Outcomes (2)

  11. Outcomes (3)

  12. Outcomes (4)

  13. Outcomes (5)

  14. Outcomes (6)

  15. Outcomes (7)

  16. Outcomes (8)

  17. Outcomes (8)

  18. Outcomes (8)

  19. What have we learned? (1) • Self-assessed skills can be a useful component of graduate/labour market surveys • Should not be used to compile ranking lists of countries etc. • Sheds light on which skills are more or less important in the world of work • These patterns are broadly similar across countries • Exceptions are comprehensible and consistent with prior knowledge about the countries concerned

  20. What have we learned? (1) • Asking own and required level on the same scale yields interesting insights into skill shortages and surpluses • Perceived strong and weak points of HE are somewhat related to shortages, but not at all to surpluses • Shortages and surpluses plausibly related to labour market outcomes, training investments, etc.

  21. Thank you for your attention! • For more information on the REFLEX and HEGESCO projects, see: • http://www.fdewb.unimaas.nl/roa/reflex/ • http://www.hegesco.org/

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