As part of our mission, IEA aims to advance research and innovation by actively promoting research projects and activities.
In 2021, the IEA R&D (Research and Development) Fund was created to improve the science and methodology of IEA studies, ensuring that they remain at the forefront of international large-scale assessments in education.
Each year, the R&D Fund addresses a variety of key topics through open and thematic calls. We look forward to seeing how the future cycles of R&D funding further the work of IEA and research in the ILSA field.
IEA is delighted to have awarded 23 total projects with funding across four calls for R&D proposals. The proposals, focus on a diverse range of topics relevant to the work of IEA. Information on the awardees from Call 4 is here. See below for the full list of projects and the available outcomes.
| Title and Authors | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| An AI-Driven Approach to TIMSS Item Verification and Alignment Ummugul Bezirhan and Matthias von Davier | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| SMART: Survey Mode and Response Trends in TIMSS and PIRLS Context Questionnaires Yuan-Ling Liaw, Alec Kennedy, Rune Müller Kristensen, and Rolf Strietholt | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| Striving for More Inclusiveness: Understanding and Addressing Student Exclusions in TIMSS and PIRLS Sabine Meinck, Umut Atasever, Matthias von Davier, Rolf Strietholt, and Bethany Fishbein | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| Enhancing Questionnaire Relevance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Comparative Analysis of Regional Assessment Frameworks and IEA Instruments in Primary Education Oliver Neuschmidt, Clara Beyer, Sarah Howie, and Katherine Reynolds | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| Information Retrieval Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation on PIRLS Documents Widianto Persadha and Heiko Sibberns | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| Assessment Design for Accommodating Participants with Tailored Support Rolf Strietholt, Nurullah Eryilmaz, Julian Fraillon, Olga Kunina-Habenich, and Ana María Mejía-Rodríguez | Outcome Forthcoming | |
| A Two-Step Imputation Approach Combining Item-Response-Theory and Deep-Learning Methods in Large Scale Survey Assessments Peter van Rijn, Usama Ali, and Priyadarshini Dwivedi | Outcome Forthcoming |
| Title and Authors | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| An Examination on the Performance of Sampling Variance Estimators in ILSAs Umut Atasever, Sabine Meinck, and Diego Cortés | Published | Final Report |
| Field Trial Sample Size Andrés Christiansen | Outcome Forthcoming | Final Report |
| Using Large Language Models for Automatic Item Generation: Development and Validation for TIMSS Fourth Grade Marek Muszyński, Hubert Plisiecki, Tomasz Żółtak, and Artur Pokropek | Published | Final Report Annex and supplement |
| Approximate Areas of Interest for Enhanced Understanding of Student Motivation and Task Interaction in IEA Assessments Artur Pokropek, Tomasz Żółtak, and Marek Muszyński | Published | Final Report |
| Enhancing Cross-Cultural Comparisons in ILSAs: A Comprehensive Investigation and Guideline Development Andrés Sandoval-Hernández, Diego Carrasco, and Nurullah Eryilmaz | Published | Final Report Guidelines Studies in Educational Evaluation Journal Article EMP Journal Article Library |
| Dimensionality and Mode Effects in PIRLS 2016 and 2021: Evaluating the Comparability of Different Assessment Modes Rolf Strietholt, Stefan Johansson, Elpis Grammatikopoulou, Purya Baghaei, | Published | Final Report Part A Final Report Part B Journal Article |
| Gauging the Instructional Sensitivity of Ordinal Assessment Items Anne Traynor, Özge Altıntaş, Yu-Hui Chang, and Setlhomo Koloi-Keaikitse | Published | Final Report Journal Article |
| Title and Authors | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| CABE: Studying School-level Nonresponse within a Partial Identification Framework Diego Cortes, Jeff Dominitz, Maximiliano Romero, and Sabine Meinck | Published | Final report Journal article |
| Improving Scaling in Large-scale Assessment: A Variable Selection Approach to Latent Regression Yunxiao Chen, Motonori Oka, and Matthias von Davier | Published | Final report |
| Improving Data in Electronic Surveys Mojca Rožman, Andrés Christiansen, Rolf Strietholt, Jeppe Bundsgaard, Julian Fraillon, and Ronny Scherer | Published | Final report |
| To Mix or not to Mix Positively and Negatively Worded Items Isa Steinmann | Published | Final report |
| Improving Parental Occupation Procedures with AI Daniel Duckworth and Julian Fraillon | Published | Final Report |
| Operational Automatic Scoring of Text Responses in 2016 ePIRLS: Performance and Linguistic Variance Hyo Jeong Shin, Nico Andersen, Andrea Horbach, Euigyum Kim, Jisoo Baik, and Fabian Zehner | Published | Final report |
| Title and Authors | Status | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Using Neural Network Classification of the Automated Scoring of Images Responses in TIMSS 2023 Lale Khorramdel, Lillian Tyack, and Matthias von Davier | Published | Final report Journal article |
| Understanding Students' Computational Thinking Strategies Using Process Data in ICILS 2018 Qiwei He and Eugenio Gonzalez | Published | Final report |
| Validity and Measurement Properties in Technology-Enhanced Items: A Balancing Act Saskia Wool, Paul Drijvers, Remco Feskens, Dylan Molenaar, and Emmelien van der Scheer | Published | Part A final report Part B final report |
The R&D fund is currently closed for proposals, please watch this space for future open calls.
The R&D program welcomes proposals from researchers external to IEA, staff, and experts from study centers, and IEA staff. The award is based on merit only.
All proposals submitted for consideration must:
- Be based on rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and opportunities in IEA’s work on ILSAs;
- Relate to methods and approaches that IEA uses in one or more of its studies, or related to those methods and approaches that would, in a forward-looking way, have the potential to significantly improve IEA’s work in the future;
- Propose specific approaches, innovations, and methods with a tangible outcome or recommendation that adds value to IEA studies and can be used within the work of IEA immediately or in the future;
- Ensure the proposed approaches can be realistically implemented and are tied to the actual needs identified within the proposal;
- Not be duplicative of work already ongoing at IEA.
For any questions regarding R&D, please contact rd@iea.nl.
All R&D proposals and final outcomes are subject to a single-blind peer review process. We are extremely thankful to our network of peer reviewers and would like to acknowledge their commitment to ensuring high-quality selection and research results from the R&D projects.
For call 1 through 5, our review network includes (in alphabetical order):
Francesco Avissati
Peter Barwis
Ummugul Bezirhan
Johan Braeken
Maximilian Brinkmann
Janine Buchholz
Jeppe Bundsgaard
Nathan Burroughs
Charalambos Charalambous
Yunxiao Chen
Diego Cortes
Julian Fraillon
Eugenio Gonzalez
Jiangang Hao
Martin Hooper
Sarah Howie
Hong Jiao
Nina Jude
Alec Kennedy
Saskia Kespaik
Lale Khorramdel
Tom Krenzke
Ulf Kröhne
Aurelie LaCriox
Dihao Leng
Yuan-Ling (Linda) Liaw
Antoine Marivin
João Marôco
Guido Martin
Michael O. Martin
Sabine Meinck
Bart Meulemann
Daniel Andres Miranda Fuenzalida
Christian Monseur
Patrick Montjouridis
Irini Moustaki
Marek Muszyński
Gabriel Nagy
Oliver Neuschmidt
Elodie Persem
Mick Couper
Steve Dept
Reinaldo dos Santos
Kristi Donaldson
Brita Dorer
Daniel Duckworth
Jean Dumais
David Ebbs
Michèle Ernst Stähli
Remco Feskens
Bethany Fishbein
Pierre Foy
Ricardo Primi
Stephen Provasnik
Mark Reckase
Katherine Reynolds
Mojca Rozman
David Rutkowski
Leslie Rutkowski
Franck Salles
Andres Sandoval-Hernandez
Wolfram Schulz
Heiko Sibberns
Peter Siegel
Megan Sim
Stephen Sireci
Rolf Streitholt
Andres Strello
Nicole Swart
Esther Ulitzsch
Matthias van Davier
Peter van Rijn
Daniele Vidoni
Steve Wise
Kentaro Yamamoto
Fabian Zehner
Ting Zhang
Katie Zuber