Summary

The main objective of the quantitative survey of the Slovak education system was to explore the extent and context (e.g. school type, region) of problems identified in individual and group interviews. The quantitative survey was administered by  questionnaire. In total, 26 questionnaire versions were prepared for respondents from pre-primary up to higher education institutions, science, as well as from HR professionals. Questionnaires intended for various respondents contained common questions to gain an overview of a specific phenomenon from multiple perspectives. Questionnaires for students in the first and second cycle of higher education in Slovakia and abroad and for students at secondary schools were also available in Hungarian language.

The survey of respondents at pre-primary to secondary schools (except for students at secondary schools) was administered to a representative sample of schools according to the following survey quota variables: region, school founder, school type (only for secondary schools). Schools were selected by a stratified random selection method. Selection of respondents among secondary school students, higher education staff and professionals in HR was carried out by self-selection combined with  intentional selection. Samples of secondary school students, teachers, scientists, and artists at higher education institutions, and higher education students in Slovakia (first stage, second stage, doctoral candidates) are representative according to prior selected survey quota variables. For two student samples (Slovak students studying at higher education institutions abroad, and academics and scientists working abroad) it was impossible to define the survey quota variables, because there is no information available about characteristics of these groups. Information gathered was interpreted only in relation to these respondents, as there is no exact information available about sample characteristics, and the same applies to professionals in HR.

Questionnaires for respondents from pre-primary to secondary schools (except for students at secondary schools) and a part of the questionnaires for professionals in HR were administered in  paper form. Questionnaires for other respondents were administered online. Multiple channels were used to communicate the call for participation in the survey and filling out the questionnaires. The questionnaire survey was administered from 26. October 2017 to 15. July 2018 (data from various groups of respondents were gathered later).

Processing the quantitative survey data for pre-primary to secondary schools and higher education institutions was performed by the statistical software SPSS. Based on the prior selected quota sample variables, data were re-weighted using the iterative weighting method (except for higher education students and academic staff abroad, as well as professionals in HR). The weighting aimed to simplify  generalisation from the sample to the whole population. Various descriptive statistics were used for processing particular samples (minimum, maximum, average, median, modus values), and the Chi-Square Test and Z-Test were used for comparing column proportions. To verify dependencies between nominal characteristics of two variables, coefficients of association were applied: Phi coefficient and Cramer's V. To verify dependencies between nominal and cardinal variables, calculation of the Eta coefficient was applied. Data from the professionals in HR sample were processed by the statistical software Stata. Data analysis within the comparative analysis for particular industries, ownership types or enterprise size applied the Chi-Square Test and descriptive statistics. In total, 15,322 questionnaires were processed, from which 8,202 were completed by respondents from pre-primary to secondary schools, 6,902 by respondents from higher education and 2,018 by professionals in HR. The following tables present an overview of questionnaires processed for particular areas.

Table M_18 Number of questionnaires processed for pre-primary to secondary schools, by school type and respondent type

Table M_19 Number of questionnaires processed for higher education by respondent type

Table M_20: Number of questionnaires processed for professionals in HR