This technical paper provides details underpinning the new and previous methodologies for calculating completion and attrition rates at three different hierarchical levels: Individuals, apprenticeships, and contracts.
This document provides technical detail and supporting data for the research findings discussed in ‘The student journey in VET: the many faces of completion and non-completion’.
This technical paper summarises exploratory analysis undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of using machine learning approaches to calculate projected completion rates for VET programs and compares with the current Markov chains methodology used by NCVER.
This research examined how VET students cluster in the Australian VET market and identified eight segments.
This technical report provides an evaluation of three alternative methodological approaches for calculating completion rate projections for apprentices and trainees.
This technical analysis looks at data sourced from online job postings to see whether it can provide new and valuable insights on the skills employers ask for when advertising jobs.
This paper outlines how the methodology used to determine government-funded VET program completion rates can now also be used for total VET activity program completion rates.
This technical paper reports on the 2018 self-reported graduate model review. This statistical model is used to predict whether Student Outcomes Survey participants who self-report as graduates are ‘actual’ graduates according to official definitions.
The Apprentices and trainees estimates review dashboard aims to assess the accuracy of the estimates published by NCVER. This guide provides instructions on how to use the dashboard.
An analysis of the first year of quarterly collected and reported data on government-funded students and courses.
A more complete picture of all investment in training above and beyond that which is currently collected would be very useful for policy development.
This report looks at whether it is possible to link data from the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) with external data sources to improve the breadth of information available from the survey.
Combining the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) with other data sources would enhance the breadth of information without adding respondent burden. This discussion paper explores two issues: the potential for linking data from existing administrative collections, such as Medicare, to LSAY; and the feasibility of combining data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and LSAY via statistical matching.
This technical paper explores trends in mid-level qualifications (diplomas, advanced diplomas and associate degrees) from 2002 to 2011.
Do pre-apprenticeships help individuals to obtain an apprenticeship?
This exploratory piece of work aims to illustrate the potential of matching methods in vocational education and training (VET) research.
The Student Outcomes Survey collects information on the outcomes of two groups of students: those who completed a qualification (graduates) and those who completed only part of a course and then left the VET system (module completers). For many years several students surveyed as module completers have stated that they had gained a qualification and graduated (self-reporting graduates), and these students have been reclassified as graduates for reporting purposes. This biases the survey results as it was found that about two-thirds of them may not have completed the qualification after all. This paper outlines a predictive model which will be used for 2012 Student Outcomes Survey reporting and will ensure that this problem is resolved. As this methodology will change estimates from previous surveys substantially, they will be back cast to 2005 using the new model.
This report investigates the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) for its coverage of wellbeing questions. It is an area of considerable interest to policy-makers, and having a valid set of wellbeing questions in LSAY will enhance the capacity to investigate the links between wellbeing and other domains of interest for young people. The analysis finds three robust factors, which can be termed social wellbeing, material wellbeing and career. The three factors do not cover all the dimensions of wellbeing discussed in the literature, particularly the psychological aspects. Suggestions are made for enhancing the current list of wellbeing questions in LSAY.
The Student Outcomes Survey is an annual national survey of vocational education and training (VET) students. Since 1995, participants have been asked to rate their satisfaction with different aspects of their training, grouped under three main themes: teaching, assessment, and general skills and learning experiences. In this paper we review and compare three different methods of creating summary measures — Rasch analysis, weighted means and simple means — that encapsulate the three main themes of student satisfaction. We find that all three methods yield similar results and so recommend using the simple means method to create the summary measures.
Two features of the labour market for vocationally qualified workers are explored in this technical paper: the likelihood of self-employment versus wage employment and the determinants of income.