Methods and Procedures:
PIRLS 2021 Technical Report

Matthias von Davier, Ina V.S. Mullis, Bethany Fishbein, and Pierre Foy, Editors

This technical report documents the methods and procedures used to develop, implement, and report the results of PIRLS 2021. PIRLS 2021 incorporated two major advances in international reading assessment at the fourth grade, including transitioning from paper to digital assessment and implementing a group adaptive assessment design. There were substantial challenges in the implementation, analysis, and reporting of PIRLS 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. PIRLS 2021 data collection occurred over a two-year period, with schools worldwide facing many disruptions to normal instruction. Despite many obstacles, most countries met standards for high quality data. A multi-step, population-based linking approach to the achievement scaling enabled reporting comparable trends for paper and digital data on the PIRLS trend scale.

PIRLS 2021 was a collaborative effort involving hundreds of individuals around the world, including the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, IEA Amsterdam, IEA Hamburg, Statistics Canada, and the National Research Coordinators and their teams in the participating countries.

Contents

Assessment Development

The chapters in this volume will be posted as they become available.