Translation and Cultural Appropriateness of Survey Material in Large-scale Assessments

Dept S., Ferrari A., and Halleux, B. (2017)

In Lietz, O., Cresswell, J., Rust, K. and Adams, R. (eds.), Implementation of Large-scale Education Assessments. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp.168-191

Significant advances have been made in localisation designs for international surveys over the last couple of decades.

The following section sets seven perspectives that should function as guiding principles to prepare a localisation process that can be considered as current best practice.

Different components from existing approaches are described, starting with the now obsolete but still widely used ‘back translation’ design and ending with the highly sophisticated design used in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

This chapter points out strengths and weaknesses of each approach and singles out practices that seem to yield satisfactory outcomes. It will conclude with recommendations for a checklist of requirements that should constitute a good starting point for any localisation design.

Write to us for more details about the publication!