Hana Vonkova

• Professor
• Professor at Charles University in Prague

Call for Papers: A New Era of Education – Teacher Authority and Student Learning in the Age of AI The rise of generative AI is reshaping teacher authority and student learning. This special issue of Studia Paedagogica (June 2026) explores the impact of AI on pedagogical leadership, critical thinking, digital literacy, and ethical challenges in edu...

Understanding reporting behavior in questionnaires is a key issue in enhancing cross-national data comparability and policy decisions. Computers help improve the analysis of careless or insufficient effort (C/IE) responding by logging response times and other response behavior, ensuring data quality. We introduce a response-time based approach, bui...

Response times are becoming increasingly prominent as an important part of student response analysis. Despite the language being crucial for their analysis, its effect on questionnaire response time has not received much attention. We analyze the relationship between nine language variants of a student questionnaire and the response time to motivat...

Response times are becoming increasingly prominent as an important part of student response analysis. Despite the language being crucial for their analysis, its effect on questionnaire response time has not received much attention. We analyze the relationship between nine language variants of a student questionnaire and the response time to motivat...

Student self-reports of knowledge are widely used by researchers and educators, though their accuracy has been questioned due to potential biases. The overclaiming technique (OCT), based on the familiarity ratings of existing (reals) and non-existing (foils) items, has been used to identify accuracy and exaggeration in respondents' self-reports. We...

The relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and students' English as a foreign language (EFL) learning motivation is an under-researched topic. However, with growing concerns about how SES affects students' academic behaviors and educational outcomes, an investigation of this topic is needed. Applying the L2 motivational self-system theory,...

Gender gaps in students’ foreign language proficiency self-assessment can negatively impact their educational careers and position in the labour market. We investigated how female and male students self-assess their English as a foreign language (EFL) proficiency in comparison to their EFL test scores. We further examined the potential differential...

A number of studies have examined the relationships between response styles and the Hofstede and GLOBE cultural indices; however, studies involving adolescent samples or examining the effects of national wealth on observed relationships are scarce. This study addresses these gaps by applying simple and partial correlation analysis to the data of 15...

The link between teacher strictness and student reporting behavior in questionnaire surveys is not well understood. Using PISA 2012 data, we analyze the link between teacher strictness and students overclaiming their knowledge. Teachers’ excessive strictness relates to a higher reported familiarity with mathematical concepts by students, but not to...

Very fast response times in a questionnaire can be an indicator of careless responding. In this paper, we analyse response times of Prague basic school students on the PISA 2018 student questionnaire and the characteristics of fast responding students (speeders). Fast responding students have lower values in some socio-economic indices, such as the...

International large-scale assessments, such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), are a crucial source of information for education researchers and policymakers. The assessment also includes a student questionnaire, however, the data can be biased by the differences in reporting behavior between students. In this paper, we analy...

In the context of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), paradoxical findings concerning the relationship between questionnaire scales and student achievement are often documented. These questionnaire scales are found to correlate positively with student achievement within countries at the individual level, but negatively at the bet...

Differences in reporting behavior among students can bias data (not only) in international surveys. Using PISA 2012 data, we analyze the differences in reporting behavior of Czech students with selected characteristics (gender, parents’ education) at various schools (region, school type, and school size) and the relationship between their reporting...

The relationship between the socioeconomic status (SES) of students and academic factors is an important issue in educational research. This contribution aims to investigate the relationship between the SES of English as a foreign language learners and their families’ use of English while traveling abroad and communicating with friends. We analyze...

When gathering educational data via questionnaire, it is important that researchers obtain accurate data. However, accuracy of student self-reports is a long-term issue in the literature, as these data could be subject to various biases and inaccuracies. The overclaiming technique (OCT) has been proposed as an approach to identify accuracy and exag...

The overclaiming technique (OCT) is frequently used in research. It is based on analysis of reported familiarity with existing and non-existing items. The inclusion of the OCT in PISA is important for educational research. The aim of this article is to thematically categorize studies using PISA 2012 OCT data, which has not been done before. We iden...

In this paper, we analyze the extreme response style of Czech students in the PISA 2012 Questionnaire, together with their diligence in answering. Czech students avoid extreme answers, which places them among the most moderate respondents in the world, while the low percentage of missing and invalid answers points to their relative thoroughness. Th...

Non-language classes that are taught fully or partly in English (math, science, ICT, etc.) have emerged as an educational priority for many parents and schools in the Czech Republic in recent years. This study aims to examine the relationship between self-reported indicators of SES and student participation in these types of classes. The findings s...

Due to its geographic location, Turkey has become the largest host country of Syrian refugees in the world, accommodating more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees. One of the important aims of the Turkish government is the integration of Syrian refugee children into formal education. Despite the notable success, education of the Syrian minors have not...

Due to recent unrest around the world, the number of refugees has increased dramatically in the last decade. In order to meet the needs of this population, host countries have had to quickly adapt to provide these refugees with basic needs. One such need is to have quality education for refugee children. The aim of this paper is to compare the poli...

Due to the necessity of English knowledge for international education, business, and travel, students, parents, and educators have made English language learning a priority from an early age. However, traditional English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms are no longer the only option. Types of classes which integrate language learning and cour...

With the current emphasis placed on ICT skills development in education, accurate information about how well students master these skills becomes invaluable. Despite the wide-spread use of self-report measures of ICT skills, their accuracy has been questioned. An analysis, on a large sample, of the heterogeneity in reporting behavior in the domains...

Studies on student motivation to learn English as a foreign language (EFL) and its relationship to achievement and study aspirations among Czech students are scarce. This study aims to identify the relationship between student level of EFL achievement motivation and their achievement and study aspirations. The results of a survey among ninth-grade...

The increasing interest in English as a foreign language (EFL) across the globe has necessitated learning opportunities that engage and sustain students’ motivation to learn English. This paper aims to provide an analysis of trends in EFL motivation between 2016 and 2020. While examining 90 studies published during this time frame, we have focused...

Developing English language proficiency is of utmost importance for education systems across Europe. Self-assessment of one’s English as a foreign language (EFL) skills is a widely used source of information concerning learners’ level of language proficiency. Thus, an investigation of the way different groups of learners assess their language skill...

In recent years, the need for English as a foreign language (EFL) education in schools has become a priority worldwide. The aim of our paper is to investigate which countries currently focus on researching motivation to learn EFL and what potential reasons are behind the focus. We performed a topic search of the keywords "EFL" and "motivation" in t...

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and English as a medium of instruction (EMI) are emerging as the preferred contexts of language learning. CLIL and EMI classes continue to proliferate in schools around the globe. The aim of this paper is to investigate the current research trends in studies of motivation to learn within EMI and CLIL...

The benefits of utilizing technology in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom have become clear as research continues to find positive correlations between information technology (IT) integrated learning and student achievement and motivation. However, employing technology-enhanced pedagogy in the most effective ways within the context...

Self-assessment measures are commonly used in questionnaire surveys. However, one of the problems with self-reports is that they may be prone to differences in scale usage among respondents. The anchoring vignette method addresses this issue. It relies on two assumptions: response consistency and vignette equivalence. Here we aim to develop a frame...

An inaccurate self-assessment might hinder the effectiveness of the self-management of one’s learning, for example, people underestimating their knowledge might not utilize their capabilities. Inaccuracies in self-reported knowledge also hinder the comparability of the data across different respondents. The overclaiming technique (OCT) allows the i...

Self-assessment is commonly used in educational research (PISA, ICILS, etc.) and in real-life situations (advertisement for a post on labour market, etc.). Research studies demonstrate that in mathematics some people either over- or underestimate their competence. A similar situation can be expected in self-assessment of ICT skills. The authors of...

The valid measurement of children’s life satisfaction is key for subsequent analysis and policy recommendations. It has been demonstrated that individuals use different scales in (self-)reports which leads to misleading results. In this study we focus on the analysis of life satisfaction self-reports among children with differences in the following...

The anchoring vignette method has been proposed as an innovative approach to solve the problem with self-assessment data incomparability caused by the differences in scale usage between respondents. In this study, we use a set of 15 anchoring vignettes describing different domains of ICT skills (Information, Communication, Content creation, Safety,...

Web-based collaborative writing (CW) has been widely used in the field of English as a foreign language (EFL) during the last decade. Previous studies have mainly focused on how online platforms have facilitated the CW process for EFL learners, how web-based CW has shown progress in EFL learners’ writing development, and how EFL learners in groups...

Self-efficacy is an important concept that may be used to understand students’ confidence and beliefs about their competencies to perform tasks. In the field of ICT, more attention is currently being paid to this concept. Our aim was to investigate the relationship between students’ ICT self-efficacy (ICT SE) and their ICT activities. Our sample co...

This study is about an investigation of Turkish high school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ self-reported accounts of the use of Google Translate (GT) as an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool in a web-based collaborative writing (CW) activity. Two groups of three EFL learners (16 years) were involved in a CW task in E...

This paper presents pilot study findings of a research project about the application of anchoring vignettes in the analysis of Czech upper secondary school students’ self-assessment of ICT skills. The pilot study was conducted in December 2017 with 166 respondents from four different types of upper secondary schools. Anchoring vignettes, which are...

The issue of school educational outcomes measurement is of great concern to both researchers and practitioners. We can distinguish two main types of outcomes: outcomes in the domain of academic achievement (e.g., mathematics, information and communication technologies, and history) and outcomes in the behavioral domain (school discipline). Both typ...

The overclaiming technique (OCT) is a novel way of measuring how socially desirable responding influences survey responses. It has the potential to enhance the cross-cultural comparability of survey data. It allows the identification of respondents' knowledge accuracy and exaggeration by comparing their assessments of familiarity with existing and...

Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but they are often affected by heterogeneity in reporting behavior. Failing to correct for this heterogeneity can lead to invalid comparisons across groups. The researchers use the parametric anchoring vignette method to correct for cross-country incomparability of studen...

Self-assessment questions are used often in survey research. A direct comparison of countries or different socioeconomic groups based on answers to such questions may lead to an incorrect conclusion about the respondents’ actual situation. One of the reasons may be that respondents from different groups use the response scale in different ways, for...

Self-assessment is commonly used in educational research (PISA, ICILS, etc.) and in real-life situations (advertisement for a post on labour market, etc.). Research studies demonstrate that in mathematics some people either over- or underestimate their competence. A similar situation can be expected in self-assessment of ICT skills. The authors of...

V současné značně heterogenní školní populaci žáků hrozí zvýšené riziko, že výsledky získané pomocí dotazníkových šetření budou zkresleny rozdíly v užívání škály mezi různými žáky či skupinami žáků. Například dva žáci se stejnou úrovní motivace k učení mohou v dotazníku hodnotit svou motivaci odlišně, jeden jako vysokou, druhý jako nízkou. Takto z...

We conducted a feasibility study for matching children (N = 2571, average age 12 years, 50.4% female) and their parents (N = 1931, average age 41 years, 83.3% female) represented by an anonymous self-generated identification code (SGIC) and assessed its methodological properties. We used a nine-character SGIC with the children and a mirrored versio...

Dotazníková šetření se (sebe)hodnoticími položkami jsou v pedagogickém výzkumu využívána často. Respondenti však mohou na tyto položky odpovídat rozdílně, tj. volit jiné škálové kategorie, přestože jejich objektivní situace je stejná. Metoda ukotvujících vinět nabízí řešení tohoto problému. Odpovědi na tyto položky koriguje o rozdílné užívání škály...

The authors have studied heterogeneity in reporting behavior and its impact on the analysis of self-reports about students’ dishonest behavior in schools. Two hundred sixty-five randomly chosen, seventh-grade students (typically 12 years old) from lower secondary schools in Prague 6, a district in the capital of the Czech Republic, participated in...

Aim To study the effect of a universal prevention intervention targeting cannabis use in individual children with different risk profiles. Methods A school-based randomized controlled prevention trial was conducted over a period of 33 months (n=1,874 sixth-graders, baseline mean age 11.82). We used a two-level random intercept logistic model for p...

Studie zabývající se podváděním žáků často využívají dotazníky obsahující sebehodnotící položky s posuzovacími škálami. Získané výsledky však nemusí reflektovat pouze úroveň nečestného chování, ale i rozdílné užívání škály respondenty. Autoři na vzorku žáků sedmých tříd (N = 265) pomocí metody ukotvujících vinět ukazují, jak může rozdílné užívání š...

Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but might be affected by reference group bias if the frame of reference (i.e. implicit standards), used to answer the questions, differs across students. The anchoring vignettes method was introduced, in other areas of social science, precisely to correct for this source...

Self-reporting of ICT knowledge and skills is commonly used in questionnaire surveys among students and in job search situations to provide information about actual ICT knowledge and skills. The main advantage of this approach is its low cost. The responses can, however, reflect not only the actual level of knowledge and skills but also the self-as...

V pedagogickém výzkumu se velmi často užívají (sebe)hodnotící otázky k měření postojů, hodnot, subjektivních norem a (ne)kognitivních dovedností. Existuje však četná evidence, že respondenti užívají kategorie u posuzovacích škál odlišným způsobem. Metoda ukotvujících vinět umožňuje korigovat (sebe)hodnocení o rozdílné užívání škály tak, aby sebehod...

Self-reports are an indispensable source of information in education research but might be affected by reference group bias if the frame of reference (i.e. implicit standards), used to answer the questions, differs across students. The anchoring vignettes method was introduced, in other areas of social science, precisely to correct for this source...

We use two waves of a population based survey (the RAND American Life Panel) to investigate the relations between various evaluative and experienced well-being measures based on the English Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Gallup Wellbeing Index, and a 12-item hedonic well-being module of the Health and Retirement Study. In a randomized set-up we a...

This paper constructs a two-country (Home and Foreign) general equilibrium model of Schumpeterian growth without scale effects. The scale effects property is removed by introducing two distinct specifications in the knowledge production function: the permanent effect on growth (PEG) specification, which allows policy effects on long-run growth; and...

This study aims to examine the effect of school-based preventive intervention on cannabis use in Czech adolescents with different levels of risk factors and provide evidence of its universality. A randomized controlled prevention trial with six waves was conducted over a period of 33 months. We used a two-level logistic random-intercept model for p...

. Comparing assessments on a subjective scale across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by differences in response scales across groups. Anchoring vignettes help to correct for such differences, either in parametric models (the compound hierarchical ordered probit (CHOPIT) model and extensions) or non-parametrically, comparing ran...

In this paper we introduce the designs of two semi-independent randomised controlled prevention trials. The objective of both research projects is to examine the effect of a school-based prevention intervention, called Unplugged, on substance use in Czech and Slovak sixth-graders. In the Czech Republic, in addition, another primary aim is to study...

As a consequence of the Bologna process, five-year master’s teacher education programmes have been divided into three-year bachelor’s and two-year master’s studies in the Czech Republic. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the two-cycle implementation in teacher education programmes in the Czech Republic and present survey resul...

One goal of the Bologna process is to restructure European university programs from monolithic five-year programs into two cycles, bachelor’s and master’s. In this paper, we ask academic staff (n=52) and students (n=126) at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague about their opinions on the implementation of the two-cycle system at...

In survey research, respondents’ self-assessment is often used to compare the objective state across different groups. The problem is that self-assessments may depend on both the respondents’ objective situation and the way in which they interpret scale categories. The anchoring vignette method offers a solution of this problem. Using evaluation of...

Summary The presented monograph ’The Bologna Process and its Impact on Structured Teacher Education‘ is one of the outcomes of the research initiative called ’Teacher Profession in Changing Requirements on Education’ whose investigator is the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague. The publication is meant primarily for the academic...

BACKGROUND: Studies published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in 2006 and 2009 (“How Young Adults Obtain Prescription Pain Relievers for Nonmedical Use” and “Trends in Non-medical Use of Prescription Pain Relievers: 2002 to 2007”) introduce evidence of a trend of abusing prescribed opioid analgesics. This i...

Comparing assessments of health, job satisfaction, etc. on a subjective scale across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by differences in response scales across groups. Anchoring vignettes help to correct for such differences, either in parametric models (CHOPIT and extensions) or nonparametrically, comparing rankings of vignette...

  Analysis of self-assessments may yield biased results when respondents use the response categories of survey questions in different ways. An anchoring vignette is a short description of relevant aspects of a hypothetical person's life and can be used to correct self-assessments for heterogeneity in reporting behaviour. The paper studies the valid...

The use of anchoring vignettes to correct for differential item functioning rests upon two identifying assumptions: vignette equivalence and response consistency. To test the second assumption the authors conduct an experiment in which respondents in an Internet panel are asked to both describe their health in a number of domains and rate their hea...

Analysis of self-assessments may yield biased results when respondents use the response categories of survey questions in different ways. An anchoring vignette is a short description of relevant aspects of a hypothetical person’s life and can be used to correct self-assessments for heterogeneity in reporting behaviour.The paper studies the validity...

The article deals with manipulation in Czech schools. It is an output of international project „Teacher in post-socialistic countries as a manipulator and a victim in the context of education policy and pedagogical activity“. Manipulation is here defined as a special type of influence exerted intentionally on a person, which is motivated by goals o...

This article deals with the concept mapping method. The method has not yet received much attention in educational publications in the Czech language. The authors describe principles, functions, advantages and limitations of this method and discuss its use in different areas. Use of concept mapping in educational situations is demonstrated on concep...

We study effects of financial incentives on the retirement age using stated preference data. Dutch survey respondents were given hypothetical retirement scenarios describing age(s) of (partial and full) retirement and replacement rate(s). A structural model is estimated in which utility is the discounted sum of within period utilities that depend o...