What does PISA actually assess? This book presents all the publicly available questions from the PISA surveys. Some of these questions were used in the PISA 2000, 2003 and 2006 surveys and others were used in developing and trying out the assessment. After a brief introduction to the PISA...

This book describes the instruments underlying the PISA 2000 assessment. It introduces the PISA approach to assessing reading, mathematical and scientific literacy with its three dimensions of process, content and context. Further, it presents a sample of PISA 2000 tasks, and explains how these...

This test measures chromosome events in spermatogonial germ cells and is, therefore, expected to be predictive of induction of inheritable mutations in germ cells. Male Chinese hamsters and mice are commonly used. Animals are exposed to the test substance (liquid or solid) by an appropriate...

This Test Guideline is used in the assessment and evaluation of the toxic effects of organophosporus substances. Daily doses of the test substance are administered orally (preferably by gavage or administration of gelatin capsules) to domestic laying hens (aged 8 to 12 months) for 28 days. The...

This Test Guideline describes the methods allowing the determination of the dissociation constants in water. The dissociation is the reversible splitting into two or more chemical species which may be ionic. The determination of the dissociation constant requires a measure of the concentrations...

This Test Guideline lists methods for determining the density of liquids and solids, giving only a very succinct description of them. The density of a substance is the quotient of its mass and its volume and is expressed in kg/m3. Several methods are for liquid substance only: hydrometer,...

This Test Guideline describes the polarographic method. The ability of a substance to form complexes with metals can be assessed by means of polarographic techniques which allow the determination of stability constants for some complexes. The polarographic method can be applied to substances...

The bacterial reverse mutation test uses amino-acid requiring at least five strains of Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli to detect point mutations by base substitutions or frameshifts. The principle of this bacterial reverse mutation test is that it detects mutations which revert...

Dominant lethal (DL) effects cause embryonic or foetal death. Induction of a dominant lethal event after exposure to a test substance (liquid, solid, vapour or gas, …) indicates that the substance has affected germinal tissue of the test species. Dominant lethals are generally accepted to be...