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.
R&D Outcomes and Awardees
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 | |
| 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 |
| 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 |
Eligibility
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.