Categorizing Educational Qualifications

I had to look at a survey for a colleague. She was interested in getting information about the education and qualifications of survey respondents and just put in an open-ended question.

Bad idea! Why? Have you ever tried to afterwards classify people's qualifications into coding categories? I'm sure it can be done but its much better to give the people your classification categories, and have them select the appropriate options.

Before we get to the classification question, decide whether you only want to know what a person's highest qualification is, or whether you want to know which combination of qualifications a person holds. Usually we ask for highest only, but this depends on your research interest.

In South Africa we have SAQA (the South African Qualifications Authority) that provides the qualification framework and they are the best people to consult if you want a detailed qualifications framework applicable in South Africa. We seldom want this, because most people don't know what the difference between and NQF level 3 and 4 qualification is. A cool trick is to see what Stats SA uses. This is from an old General Household Survey questionnaire:


Note to users
This question is applicable to all household members. The enumerators are instructed that it is only those qualifications already obtained which must be entered. That means the current level, whereby a person is still busy with is not applicable. It is very important to complete each record even if the person has not attended school. Moreover the enumerators are instructed that diploma and certificates must be of at least six months duration.

Universe
All members of the household in the selected dwelling.

Final code list
0 = NO SCHOOLING
1 = GRADE R/0
2 = SUB A/GRADE 1
3 = SUB B/GRADE 2
4 = GRADE 3/STANDARD 1
5 = GRADE 4/STANDARD 2
6 = GRADE 5/STANDARD 3
7 = GRADE 6/STANDARD 4
8 = GRADE 7/STANDARD 5
9= GRADE 8/STANDARD 6/FORM 1
10 = GRADE 9/STANDARD 7/FORM 2
11 = GRADE 10/STANDARD 8/FORM 3
12 = GRADE 11/STANDARD 9/FORM 4
13 = GRADE 12/STANDARD 10/FORM 5/MATRIC
14 = NTC l
15 = NTC II
16 = NTC III
17 = DIPLOMA/CERTIFICATE WITH LESS THAN GRADE 12/STD 10
18 = DIPLOMA/CERTIFICATE WITH GRADE 12/STD 10
19 = DEGREE
20 = POSTGRADUATE DEGREE OR DIPLOMA
21 = OTHER (specify in column)
22 = DON'T KNOW
99 =UNSPECIFIED

This would unfortunately not work for my colleague because she is doing a survey with respondents who trained all over the world.

The international Equivalent of the SAQA standards is ISCED - The International Standard Classification of Education. It is an UNESCO standard and the last revision was in 1997.

ISCED provides an integrated and consistent statistical framework for the collection and reporting of internationally comparable education statistics. It contains two components:

a statistical framework for the comprehensive statistical description of national education and learning systems along a set of variables that are of key interest to policy makers in international educational comparisons; and

a methodology that translates national educational programmes into an internationally comparable set of categories for (i) the levels of education; and (ii) the fields of education.

Find ISCED here:
http://www.unesco.org/education/information/nfsunesco/doc/isced_1997.htm