Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (pirls)

National desired population
. PIRLS expects all 
participating education systems to define their national 
desired population to correspond as closely as possible to 
the definition of the international desired population. For 
example, for PIRLS 2001, if the fourth grade was the upper 
of the two adjacent grades containing the greatest 
proportion of 9-year-olds in a particular education system, 
then students enrolled in fourth grade were the national 
desired population for that education system. For PIRLS 
2006, 2011, and 2016 if the fourth grade of primary school 
was the grade that represents 4 years of schooling in a 
particular education system (counting from the 1st year of 
PIRLS, page 4 

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NCES Handbook of Survey Methods 
ISCED Level 1), then students enrolled in fourth grade were 
the national desired population for that education system. 
National defined population
. The national defined 
population is the population of students who were actually 
included in an education system’s survey population. 
Although education systems are expected to include all 
students in the target grade in their definition of the 
population, sometimes it is not possible to include all 
students who fall under the definition of the international 
desired population. All students in the desired population 
who are not included in the defined population are referred 
to as the excluded population. 
National Research Coordinators (NRCs)
. Each country 
appoints a National Research Coordinator who, together 
with staff at the PIRLS national center, is responsible for 
all aspects of the study within that country. NRCs play a 
central part in ensuring the suitability of the assessment 
materials including scoring and coding of data, and they 
are responsible for collecting and preparing data for the 
PIRLS assessment according to the procedures specified 
internationally, and even more specifically is responsible 
for implementing the sample design, including 
documenting each step of the sampling procedure. NRCs 
also nominate quality control monitors and interact with 
data processing centers to accomplish data cleaning and 
documentation.