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AbstractThe United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that more than half of the 65 million refugees and displaced people identified worldwide are under the age of 18. For this reason, researchers, practitioners and policymakers need to understand the consequences of forced migration on the integration of refugee children and youth in receiving countries. A first step to do that is to scope out the state of current research on these issues and identify possible gaps. To that end, the article offers a scoping review of peer-reviewed English and German academic articles on refugee children and youth's integration over a 20-year period. The review finds: little consensus on the definitions of 'children' or 'youth'; most studies focus on girls and boys that are between 12 and 19 years old; there is a focus on refugees landing in developed countries; and there is a lack of longitudinal and quantitative studies.

Background: Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) revealed that countries systematically differ in their respondents' literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments skills; skill levels also vary by gender, age, level of education or migration background. Similarly, systematic differences have been documented with respect to adults' participation in education, which can be considered as a means to develop and maintain skills. From a psychological perspective, motivation to learn is considered a key factor associated with both skill development and participation in (further) education. In order to account for motivation when analyzing PIAAC data, four items from the PIAAC background questionnaire were recently compiled into a motivation-to-learn scale. This scale has been found to be invariant (i.e., showing full weak and partial strong measurement invariance) across 21 countries. Methods: This paper presents further analyses using multiple-group graded response models to scrutinize the validity of the motivation-to-learn scale for group comparisons. Results: Results indicate at least partial strong measurement invariance across gender, age groups, level of education, and migration background in most countries under study (all CFI > .95, all RMSEA < .08). Thus, the scale is suitable for comparing both means and associations across these groups. Conclusions: Results are discussed in light of country characteristics, challenges of measurement invariance testing, and potential future research using PIAAC data.

Background: Despite the importance of lifelong learning as a key to individual and societal prosperity, we know little about adult motivation to engage in learning across the lifespan. Building on educational psychological approaches, this article presents a measure of Motivation-to-Learn using four items from the background questionnaire of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Methods: We used multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses for ordered categorical data to investigate the scale's dimensionality and measurement invariance across countries. Regression analyses were used to investigate the scale's criterion validity. Results: Results show that the proposed four-item scale fits the data considerably better than the original six-item scale labeled Readiness-to-Learn. Further analyses support the scale's configural, metric (weak) and partial scalar (strong) measurement invariance across 21 countries. As expected, Motivation-to-Learn has significant relations to the working population's engagement in learning in terms of participation in non-formal education over the last 12 months. These relations remain relevant after taking literacy as an indicator of level of education into account. Conclusion: The Motivation-to-Learn scale presented here may be used to indicate adult motivation in cross-country comparisons. The potential of using the scale in future PIAAC analyses and research on adult learning is discussed.

Welcher migrationsbezogenen Indikatoren sich eine Forschungsarbeit in einer oder mehreren Disziplinen bedient, ist in starken Maße abhängig davon, welche Fragestellungen untersucht werden. Daraus ergeben sich unterschiedlich starke Fokussierungen auf spezifische Indikatoren (z. B. Sprachhintergrund, Geburtsort, Staatsbürgerschaft), deren Implikationen im Rahmen dieses Buchbeitrages diskutiert werden. Empirische Vorarbeiten zeigen, wie sich Ergebnisse in Abhängigkeit von unterschiedlichen Operationalisierungen des Migrationshintergrunds unterscheiden können. Im Anschluss an die Darstellung interdisziplinär etablierter Operationalisierungen des Migrationshintergrunds werden die theoretischen Zugänge und Prozesse, die diesen Operationalisierungen (implizit) in den exemplarisch ausgewählte Disziplinen zugrunde liegen, beschrieben. (DIPF/Orig.).

Given that children and adolescents constitute a growing and significant share of forced migrants worldwide, assessing the state of research on and the methods used to study the acculturation of this group is both timely and essential. The acculturation of refugee children and adolescents in host countries occurs primarily within educational institutions and through the acquisition of the language of the new host society. This scoping review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1987 and 2016 (N = 192 eligible studies) examined the extent to which individual-level factors (e.g., gender, age) and contextual factors (e.g., country of residence) emphasized by acculturation models have been considered in research involving young refugees in the educational domain. In addition, the research designs and methods applied in these studies were evaluated, and content analysis was performed to examine whether individual-level factors considered in the sample of studies were related to educational outcomes of young refugees. Overall, the review revealed that very few studies provided adequate information on sample composition, or considered individual and contextual factors, thus leaving crucial gaps in the knowledge about the acculturation of young refugees. Guidelines for future research are proposed to remedy the identified research deficits.

This chapter gives an overview of the most important features of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey as it pertains to two main goals. First, only a well-designed survey will lead to accurate and comparable test scores across different countries and languages both within and across assessment cycles. Second, only an understanding of its complex survey design will lead to proper use of the PIAAC data in secondary analyses and meaningful interpretation of results by psychometricians, data analysts, scientists, and policymakers. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the PIAAC survey followed by an overview of the background questionnaire and the cognitive measures. The cognitive measures are then compared to what was assessed in previous international adult surveys. Key features of the assessment design are discussed followed by a section describing what could be done to improve future PIAAC cycles.

Linking survey data to administrative data offers researchers many opportunities. In particular, it enables them to enrich survey data with additional information without increasing the burden on respondents. German PIAAC data on individual skills, for example, can be combined with administrative data on individual employment histories. However, as the linkage of survey data with administrative data records requires the consent of respondents, there may be bias in the linked dataset if only a subsample of respondents - for example, high-educated individuals - give their consent. The present chapter provides an overview of the pilot project about linking the German PIAAC data with individual administrative data. In a first step, we illustrate characteristics of the linkable datasets and describe the linkage process and its methodological challenges. In a second step, we provide an illustrative example of the use of the linked data and investigate how the skills assessed in PIAAC are associated with the linkage decision.