ICCS 2009 Technical Report - IEA

outcomes were discussed with the national coordinators and experts, as was the draft studentquestionnaire proposed for use in the final data collection. This process led to formulation ofthe questionnaire that would be used during the final data-collection stage of ICCS.The final international student questionnaire consisted of 173 items. Fifty-two of these itemswere designed to capture student-background information and 121 were designed to measurethe affective-behavioral domains specified in the assessment framework. Another 22 items inthe ICCS student questionnaire were optional: national centers could choose to administer orexclude them from their national instrument. The main survey student questionnaire consistedof the following sections:• About you: this section of items included questions about the students’ age, gender, andexpected education.• Your home and your family: these questions focused on characteristics of the students’ homesand their parents.• Your activities: these questions asked students to report on the extent to which they engagedin specified activities at home, at school, and in the wider community.• Your school: students were asked to give their perceptions of different aspects of theirschools.• Citizens and society: these questions asked students about aspects of democracy andcitizenship behavior.• You and society: this block of questions asked students to give their views of their ownrelationship with different aspects of society.• Rights and responsibilities: these questions were designed to measure student attitudes towardequal rights for gender groups, ethnic/racial groups, and immigrants.• Institutions and society: this set of questions asked students to give their perceptions of civicinstitutions and their country.• Participating in society: these questions focused on students’ self-confidence with regardto active participation and on their likelihood of engaging in different modes of citizenparticipation in the future.• You and religion: this block of questions, which each country could elect to include in thequestionnaire, asked students about their religious background and practices as well astheir attitudes toward the influence of religion on society.Most of the student questionnaire items were developed at the ISC and at the center’s partnerinstitutions. However, national centers also proposed additional student questionnaire material,some of which was included in the final survey instrument.Optional items were designed to capture variables that some of the participating countriesperceived as either not relevant or inappropriate to their national contexts countries but whichall of the other countries regarded as crucial. In these cases, single questions or sets of questionswere included as international options. This meant that each national center could choosewhether to administer this material. In addition, because there was some interest in measuringaspects of the European region (e.g., trust in European institutions) within the context of theinternational student questionnaire, several optional European items were added to some of theinternational item-sets.ICCS questionnaire development37