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International student mobility has been rising as a global phenomenon in the last few decades, while its impact could be various in different contexts. For the European Union (EU), studying in another EU member country could be regarded as an important factor for the solidarity and integrity of the Union. The current study elaborates on the role of studying abroad regarding the attitudes of people toward immigration in the EU. It shows that people who are studying in an EU member country, belonging to higher social classes and from EU15 countries, are more likely to have positive attitudes toward immigration. But after controlling several socio-demographic variables studying abroad still contributes positively to the attitudes of EU citizens toward immigration. Accordingly, current study provides promising pieces of evidence on the social contribution of studying abroad for both future research and policymakers.

Several studies have been published on disengaged test respondents, and others have analyzed disengaged survey respondents separately. For many large-scale assessments, students answer questionnaire and test items in succession. This study examines the percentage of students who continuously engage in disengaged responding behaviors across sections in a low-stakes assessment. The effects on calculated scores of filtering students, based on their responding behaviors, are also analyzed. Data of this study came from the 2015 administration of PISA. For data analysis, frequencies and percentages of engaged students in the sessions were initially calculated using students' response times. To investigate the impact of filtering disengaged respondents on parameter estimation, three groups were created, namely engaged in both measures, engaged only in the test, and engaged only in the questionnaire. Next, several validity checks were performed on each group to verify the accuracy of the classifications and the impact of filtering student groups based on their responding behavior. The results indicate that students who are disengaged in tests tend to continue this behavior when responding to the questionnaire items in PISA. Moreover, the rate of continuity of disengaged responding is non-negligible as can be seen from the effect sizes. On the other hand, removing disengaged students in both measures led to higher or nearly the same performance ratings compared to the other groups. Researchers analyzing the dataset including achievement tests and survey items are recommended to review disengaged responses and filter out students who are continuously showing disengaged responding before performing further statistical analysis.

This study explores the role of the welfare state in reducing young people not being in education, employment, or training (NEET)s across 15 European countries. Using data from the Survey of Adult Skills in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in combination with the Social Expenditure Database, we conducted cross-national analysis to reveal whether the increase in public social spending moderates the risk of being NEET at a young adult age, especially for socially disadvantaged young people. Our results highlighted that the rise of one percentage point of public social spending per gross domestic product, including social expenditure on education, active labor market, and unemployment, is significantly associated with decreasing the odds of being NEET. Furthermore, these social expenditures appeared to lower the NEET risk given socially disadvantaged backgrounds suggesting that young people with low educational levels, whose parents have low educational attainment levels, non-immigrant families, and females are likely to benefit given the robust social protection system. These findings suggest that public social spending may be an effective investment in promoting the social involvement of young people from socially disadvantaged background.

In this study, we investigated factors predictive of disconnection, or not being in education, employment, or training (NEET), among young adults with at least a 2-year college degree. We also explored the extent to which disconnection influences civic participation and well-being among NEETs with and without college degrees. The authors used 2012 and 2015 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data from the Survey of Adult Skills in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for 29 countries, including the United States, along with US 2012 data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Results highlight that college-educated individuals whose parents have low levels of educational attainment actually have a higher likelihood of becoming NEET relative to college-educated individuals whose parents are more highly educated. Study findings also emphasize the influence of economic and geographic differences (country-level for OECD and county-level for United States) on NEET rates, in addition to the extent to which mothers have a higher likelihood and fathers have a lower likelihood of being NEET relative to their childless peers and the influence of country-level family leave policies on the odds of being NEET across the OECD. College field of study also emerges as an important influence on disconnection across the 29 OECD countries in the study, but not in the United States separately. Finally, comparing results for college-educated NEETs and NEETs without degrees, we found that higher education appears to reduce the likelihood of community disengagement and reports of poor health among NEETs across the OECD countries. However, this is not the case within the United States where NEETs are less likely to be engaged in their communities and more likely to describe themselves as in poor health regardless of their educational attainment.

The increasing availability of non-formal education in the form of Open Education Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) gives rise to the questions of how such education can be formally recognized for credit. Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR), and Qualification Frameworks are fields of practice actively engaged in and associated with the recognition of non-formal education (RNFE) and can provide guidance on RNFE for the recognition of OERs/MOOCs. A scoping exercise reviews the literatures from the three fields and associated practical exemplars. Findings suggest a growing demand for, growth in, and diversification of, the recognition of non-formal education. Synergies or creative combinations of expertise across the three fields that could be further exploited to gain maximum traction for RNFE are identified. These are multi-dimensional: top-down, bottom-up, sector to sector, country to country, qualification framework to qualification framework, system to system, field to field. There is ample evidence that the process of recognition, albeit demanding, "does" have a positive effect on the quality of the NFE, and by association, it is hoped, on the qualification status of individuals and their access to related social and economic benefits.

In this study, the variables having impact on the student motivation have been analyzed based on the articles, conference papers, master's theses and doctoral dissertations published in the years 2000-2017. A total of 165 research papers were selected for the research material and the data were collected through qualitative research techniques through document review and content analysis. According to the research results, the most important factors affecting student motivation are the fields of teacher, teachers' classroom management skills and their teaching methods. In this research, factors having less influence on the student motivation are parental communication, student characteristics and study fields. In addition, relational search type was used more than others, mostly students were selected as the study group and most researches were conducted in USA and Turkey.

We examine recent research across countries and cultures in regard to the issues related to the formation of gifted and talented education perspectives, policies, and practices. Many modern cultures and subcultures have developed formal and informal definitions of what it means to be gifted and talented, and when we compare the perceptions, policies, and practices across nations, we discover very different constructs of intelligence and ability. These understandings of giftedness and gifted and talented education can be grouped into four binary dimensions, scholarly versus co-curricular capabilities, aptitude versus achievement, nature versus nurture, and individualistic versus collective, that have significant implications for policy and practice. These constructs can serve as a foundation for countries that are looking to formalize or expand their gifted and talented education models or can be used to challenge the norms of established systems. We put forward recommendations to address some of the challenges in advancing gifted education cross-nationally, an area that is often assumed to introduce risks of enlarging social inequity. We also provide a cross-national matrix that captures known elements of gifted education policies and programs from over 20 subnational jurisdictions, countries, and world regions.

Introduction: The prevalence rates of bullying vary significantly across countries and continents. Specifically, UNESCO estimates that the prevalence rates vary from 22.8% (CentralAmerica) to 48.2% (Sub-Saharan Africa). Recently these differences among countries andregions have been attributed to culture- and country-level variables. Thus, the first purpose ofthis study is to examine the comparability of bullying in schools across countries. Secondly, across-cultural comparison of the latent mean scores of bullying is implemented. Method: The data of 286,481 adolescent students (M=15.78, SD=0.29) from 32 countrieswere analyzed using multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (MLCFA) and multigroup factoralignment. Results: Results indicated that the meaning of bullying is equivalent within and between cultures. However, cross-cultural differences in bullying are apparent. East Asian countries havethe lowest latent means of bullying, while Southeast Asian countries have the highest means.Anglo-Saxon, Eastern European, Mediterranean, South American, and Middle East countriesdisplayed rather higher scores. Discussion and Conclusion: These findings underscore the existence of cross-cultural differential responding in bullying measures. Further, the implicit role of culture as an importantvariable that determines the rates of bullying is underscored.

International businesses face a difficult task when trying to decide where to place or expand a business that could be located anywhere in the world. Each country is a complex system of human capabilities, technical systems, [infrastructure bases, laws, cultures and economic systems. How can a company know which country is best for it today, and even more importantly, which country will grow into an appropriate location for future business opportunities? Several studies offer insights into how to make site selection decisions (O'Farrell & Wood, 1994; Papadopoulos et al., 2002; Rothaermel et al., 2006) but the complexity of the data required makes initial analysis across many countries problematic. Most businesses, trying to predict an ideal country or sequence of countries to enter, are left to simple rules of thumb or decision models using limited criteria (Górecka & Szalucka, 2013; Alexander et al., 2011). A wide variety of country data of varying reliability and efficacy are frequently used (Rahman, 2003). Many of the largest companies have developed specialized teams with sophisticated models for site selection. However, for smaller companies finding reliable, consistently measured data they can interpret and analyze in ways that provide useful insights is a challenge. This article introduces the Social Progress Index, launched in April 2013 at the 10th annual Skoll World Forum held at the University of Oxford (The Origins, 2015). The Social Progress Index is unique because it is the most comprehensive framework developed for measuring social progress and the first to measure social progress independently of GDP or other economic variables (Porter, 2015; Keohane, 2015). Three cases have been chosen to demonstrate the usefulness of the Social Progress Index for site selection in three very different circumstances.

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function Production theory and Actor-Centred Institutionalism. Based on these theoretical notions we derived several hypotheses, which I tested using multilevel analysis of the data from the European Social Survey (2006), in a sample of 37,237 respondents from 22 European countries. My findings indicate that various extensiveness of social security policies matter for the level of SWB, and for the impact of education on SWB. I found negative impact of low education on SWB in all countries, except in Northern and Western European countries. This might suggest that social security policies of the latter countries have diminished the negative impact of low education on SWB. Moreover, my findings indicate positive relationship between individual education and generalized trust; as well as between generalized trust and SWB in countries with all five types of social security policies.

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 > 0.95, all RMSEA < 0.08). 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.

The old myth about the ability and variability of potential in children is a comforting myth, for those who are uneasy with the degree of inequality they see and would rather seek to justify it than confront it. The myth of inherent potential helps some explain to themselves why they are privileged. Extend the myth to believe in inherited ability and some can come to believe that their children will inherit part of a greater potential. These beliefs create and sustain inequality in society and allow for the creation of levels of ignorance in populations. This article uses insights from social geography and the sociology of education to examine how the myths are sustained past and present. It notes that countries with the highest degree of income inequality and the most unequal education systems have the worst outcomes for young adults, and these are the countries in which eugenic notions of inherited ability are resurfacing.

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores that are significantly below the average for their country. Educational systems are classified in four models following the classification proposed by N. Mons. Results show that the more integrated the educational system, the greater the number of disadvantaged high achievers, and the lower the number of disadvantaged low achievers.

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE, including deep vein thrombosis [DVT] and pulmonary embolism [PE]) has an annual incidence rate of 104–183 per 100,000 person-years. After a VTE episode, the two-year recurrence rate is about 17%. Consequently, effective and safe anticoagulation is paramount. Edoxaban is a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) approved VTE treatment. Current safety and efficacy data are derived from clinical trials, and information about treatment durations beyond 12 months are not available. Methods: ETNA-VTE-Europe is an 18-month prospective, single-arm, non-interventional, multinational post-authorisation safety study. Approximately 310 sites across eight European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) will participate in the study, with the intention to represent the regional distributions of centres, healthcare settings and specialties. An estimated cohort of 2700 patients will be recruited, the only enrolment criteria being acute symptomatic VTE, no participation in an interventional study, and treating physician decision to prescribe edoxaban independently from the registry. Data from patient medical records and/or telephone interviews will be collected at baseline, 1, 3, 6, 12 and 18 months. The primary objective is to evaluate the 18-month rate of symptomatic VTE recurrence in patients with VTE treated with edoxaban outside a clinical trial. The co-primary objective is to evaluate the real-world rates of bleeding and adverse drug reactions. Secondary outcomes include rates of other patient-relevant safety events, adherence to and discontinuation of edoxaban. Furthermore, 12-month ETNA-VTE-Europe data will be considered in the context of those for patients receiving different anticoagulants in the PREFER in VTE registry and Hokusai-VTE clinical trial. Conclusions: ETNA-VTE-Europe will allow the safety and effectiveness of edoxaban to be evaluated over an extended period in acute symptomatic VTE patients encountered in routine clinical practice. Findings will be informative for European practitioners prescribing edoxaban as part of real-world VTE treatment/prevention. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02943993. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]