This technical report is a companion report to the report ‘Completing the Foundation for Lifelong Learning - An
OECD Survey of Upper Secondary Schools’ which presents results from the survey.
This report provides an overview of the main features and technical characteristics of the International
Survey of Upper Secondary Schools (ISUSS). The purpose and history of the survey, the design, the
sampling and weighting procedures, the description of the questionnaires, the building of an international
database including sampling weights and derived variables for analytical purposes are all described in
sufficient detail to enable the reader to have a clear understanding of the technical and operational
underpinning of the survey.
This technical report is divided into three parts. The first part describes the development of the ISUSS
project covering the selection of educational programmes for this survey, the list of participating countries,
the design of the survey, the implementation of the ISUSS questionnaire and the operational procedures
for sampling and weighting.