Author Description

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)'s Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) provides internationally comparative data about students' reading achievement in primary school (the fourth grade in most participating countries). PIRLS also provides extensive information about the home and school contexts for learning to read. PIRLS 2006 was built on PIRLS 2001, with modifications designed to provide more useful and more comprehensive information to the participating countries. Forty countries and 5 Canadian provinces participated in the 2006 PIRLS assessment. Of these, 26 countries and 2 provinces had trend data from PIRLS 2001. The PIRLS 2006 test of reading comprehension was based on 10 passages, 5 literary and 5 informational. Building on the foundation provided in PIRLS 2001, the 2006 assessment included five questionnaires (for students, parents/caregivers, teachers, principals, and each country's National Research Coordinator) to collect data about the educational contexts for learning to read. This report covers the technical aspects of PIRLS 2006. It is divided into the following chapters: (1) Overview of PIRLS 2006 (Ina V.S. Mullis and Michael O. Martin); (2) Developing the PIRLS 2006 Reading Assessment and Scoring Guides (Ann M. Kennedy and Marian Sainsbury); (3) Developing the PIRLS 2006 Background Questionnaires (Ann M. Kennedy); (4) PIRLS 2006 Sample Design (Marc Joncas); (5) Translation and Translation Verification of the PIRLS Reading Assessment and Questionnaires (Barbara Malak and Kathleen L. Trong); (6) PIRLS Survey Operations Procedures (Juliane Barth, Ann M. Kennedy, and Kathleen L. Trong); (7) Quality Assurance in the PIRLS 2006 Data Collection (Ieva Johansone and Ann Kennedy); (8) Creating and Checking the PIRLS International Database (Juliane Barth and Oliver Neuschmidt); (9) PIRLS 2006 Sampling Weights and Participation Rates (Marc Joncas); (10) Item Analysis and Review (Michael O. M