although the initiatives have led to rich academic papers and policy reports, they have not yet proven useful to inform occupational skills profiling, qualification frameworks, curricula, and other decisions about human capital investments.

_Occupational skills pilots in Vietnam and Indonesia_

**The SDS’s methodology also builds on previous efforts to profile occupations in Vietnam and Indonesia.** Both efforts piloted an adaptation of the O*NET content model to gather detailed skills information on in-demand occupations using surveys. In Vietnam, 7 occupations were selected for a survey replicating O*NET’s skills, tasks, and education and experience modules (Moroz, Nguyen, and Chu 2019). The questionnaire asked respondents questions about the importance of the 35 skills in O*NET’s skills module. Questions about a skill’s level of sophistication, which are included in O*NET, were omitted given the correlation between these measures (Handel 2016). The questionnaire also asked about the task and education and experience requirements of each occupation. Respondents included both workers in the selected occupations and “occupation experts” who were individuals with significant knowledge about a given occupation.<sup>8</sup> Workers and occupation experts were identified through capstone contacts given resource constraints. In Indonesia, a pilot (Indotask) adapting similar O*NET modules targeted 51 occupations (Alatas, Granata, and Posadas 2020). The pilot also asked about task requirements, education and experience requirements, and respondent characteristics. Both job incumbents and occupation experts were included as respondents. Respondents were identified through an earlier firm-based survey of occupational demand. A comparison of results between Indotask and O*NET showed significant differences in skills use for comparable occupations. Lessons learned from these pilots are reflected in the design of the SDS, and discussed in the methodology section.

# **Methodology**

**The SDS adapts existing skills surveys to the country context and the objective of obtaining a comprehensive but also detailed picture of occupations in Vietnam** . The SDS builds on O*NET in particular, but makes significant adjustments based on country context, lessons learned from the pilots carried out in Vietnam and Indonesia, and a review of other global skills measurement initiatives.

_The SDS instrument_ The level of analysis of the SDS is occupations at the 4-digit level as defined in the Vietnam Standard Classification of Occupation (VSCO) handbook.<sup>9</sup> In Vietnam, 4-digit occupations are the most detailed occupational aggregation above the level of job titles. The instrument comprises four modules. The complete survey instrument is available in **Appendix 2** .

**Module I** . Module I is based on the tasks component of the O*NET Occupation-Specific Information module. For O*NET, a task is the smallest unit of activity with a meaningful outcome. The SDS task module is unique to each occupation surveyed: the instrument includes all tasks listed in the VSCO

> 8 The O*NET program relies on occupation experts when occupations have low employment, are new or emerging, lack industry data, or are located in remote or difficult-to-access areas.

> 9 Vietnam created VSCO based on the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008 (ISCO-08), which is a 4-level hierarchically structured system classifying and aggregating occupational information . Each 4-digit occupation has a description, task statements, and examples of job titles. For more information, see GSO (2008).

5