Highlights from the 2003 international Adult Literacy and Lifeskills survey (ALL).
Lemke, Mariann ; Miller, David ; Johnston, Jamie 等
Background
The Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL) is an international
comparative study conducted in 2003 to provide participating countries
with information about the skills of their adult populations. ALL
measured the literacy and numeracy skills of a nationally representative
sample of 16- to 65-year-olds from six participating countries (Bermuda,
Canada, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the United States). Literacy is
defined as the knowledge and skills needed to understand and use
information from text and other written formats. Numeracy applies to the
knowledge and skills required to manage mathematical demands of diverse
situations. A second phase of ALL, in which additional countries are
collecting data, is currently under way. This will allow for a greater
number of country comparisons.
ALL builds upon earlier national and international studies of adult
literacy. * Information from ALL addresses questions such as:
* What is the distribution of literacy and numeracy skills among
American adults? How do these skill distributions compare to those of
other countries?
* What is the relationship between these literacy skills and the
economic, social, and personal characteristics of individuals? For
example: Do different age or linguistic groups manifest different skill
levels? Do males and females perform differently? At what kinds of jobs
do people at various literacy levels work? What wages do they earn? How
do adults who have completed different levels of education perform?
* What is the relationship between these skills and the economic
and social characteristics of nations? For example, how do the skills of
the adult labor force of a country match with areas of the economy that
are growing?
The purpose of this Issue Brief is to provide selected initial
findings from ALL, so the Issue Brief will address only some of these
questions. For further results from ALL, see Learning a Living: First
Results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (Statistics Canada
and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2005). A
technical report for ALL, which describes in detail the procedures used
in the design, data collection, quality control, and analysis for the
study, is also forthcoming.
Study Description
ALL consisted of two components:
* A background questionnaire designed to collect general
participant information (such as sex, age, race/ethnicity, education
level, and labor force status) and more targeted questions related to
literacy practices, familiarity with information and communication
technology, education coursetaking, and health.
* A written assessment of the skills of participants in literacy
and numeracy.
* Trained interviewers administered approximately 45 minutes of
background questions and 60 minutes of assessment items to participants
in their homes. Sample items can be found online with this Issue Brief
and at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/all. In the United States, a
nationally representative sample of 3,420 adults ages 16-65 participated
in ALL. Data collection for the United States took place between January
and June 2003.
Data in this Issue Brief are shown at the national level for six
countries: Bermuda, Canada, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the United
States. Subnational estimates (for French- and English-speaking Canada,
for instance) and estimates for the participating state of Nuevo
Le[o']n in Mexico are available in Statistics Canada and
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2005).
Overall Performance of U.S. Adults
In this Issue Brief, prose literacy and document literacy scores
are combined into a single literacy score measured on a scale of 0-500
points. Numeracy scores also range from 0-500. U.S. adults had an
average literacy score of 269 and a score of 261 in numeracy (table 1).
The United States outperformed Italy in literacy and numeracy, but was
outperformed by Bermuda, Canada, Norway, and Switzerland in both skill
areas. In addition to average scores, it can also be informative to
examine how well high and low performers scored in each country. Score
differences between high and low performers can also help illustrate how
widely performance within a country varies.
In both literacy and numeracy, adults in Bermuda, Canada, and
Norway had higher scores than U.S. adults at both the high and low ends
of the score distribution. The highest performers (the top 10 percent of
adults) had literacy scores of 353 or higher in Bermuda, 344 or higher
in Canada, and 348 or higher in Norway, compared to 333 or higher in the
United States. The lowest performers (those in the bottom 10 percent) in
Bermuda, Canada, and Norway also outscored their peers in the United
States in both literacy and numeracy.
The difference in literacy and numeracy scores between the highest
and lowest performers in Norway (approximately 114 points for literacy
and 118 points for numeracy) was smaller than in the United States
(where it was 132 points for literacy and 149 points for numeracy). In
Bermuda and Canada, the differences between high and low achievers in
literacy and numeracy were not measurably larger than the U.S.
differences. In other words, although literacy scores for Bermudans,
Canadians, and Norwegians on average were higher than in the United
States, in Bermuda and Canada scores were spread to about the same
degree as in the United States, while in Norway there was less variation
in scores.
Switzerland's low performers outscored U.S. low performers in
literacy, while their high performers did not score measurably
differently. Swiss adults outperformed U.S. adults throughout the
distribution in numeracy, and the differences between high and low
performers in literacy and numeracy were smaller than in the United
States. In contrast, Italian adults scored consistently lower than U.S.
adults throughout the distribution in both literacy and numeracy.
Performance of U.S. Adults by Sex and Race/Ethnicity
There was no measurable difference in the literacy performance of
men and women in Bermuda, Canada, Norway, or the United States (figure
1). However, in Italy and Switzerland, men outscored women. Men
outperformed women on the numeracy scale in every country, with a range
from 11 points (Italy) to 16 points (Switzerland). In the United States,
men scored 15 points higher than women on the numeracy scale.
Racial and ethnic groups vary between countries, so it is not
feasible to compare their performance across countries on international
assessments. Findings are therefore reported here for the United States
only. White U.S. adults outscored Black, Hispanic, and "other"
adults in both literacy and numeracy (figure 2).
There was no measurable difference in the performance of Blacks and
Hispanics in literacy or numeracy.
Reference
Statistics Canada and Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. (2005). Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult
Literacy and Life Skills Survey. Ottawa and Paris: Author.
Footnotes
* An assessment of young adult literacy was conducted in the United
States in 1985, an assessment of the literacy of job seekers in 1991, a
National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) in 1992, and a follow-up to NALS,
the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), was conducted in 2003.
ALL is the direct successor to the International Adult Literacy Survey
(IALS), which was conducted in three phases (1994, 1996, and 1998) in 20
nations, including the United States. IALS measured adults' prose,
document, and quantitative literacy skills. Prose literacy items are
made up of continuous texts (formed of sentences organized into
paragraphs). Document literacy items are made up of noncontinuous texts
(tables, schedules, charts, graphs, or other texts with clearly defined
rows and columns). In IALS, the quantitative literacy scale was made up
of continuous and noncontinuous texts in which respondents had to
identify and perform one or more arithmetic operations. This scale was
replaced with the numeracy scale in ALL, so that change over time can be
measured only for prose literacy and document literacy. The numeracy
scale was designed to be broader than the quantitative literacy scale,
going beyond applying arithmetic skills to a wider range of mathematical
skills (e.g., use of number sense, estimation, statistics). An
additional skill area, problem solving, was assessed in other
participating countries in ALL in 2003; however, the United States did
not collect this information. For results in problem solving, see
Statistics Canada and Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (2005).
Data source: Statistics Canada and Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL),
2003.
For technical information, such as standard errors and sample
items, see the online version of this Issue Brief at
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005117.
For more information on ALL,
visit http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/all.
Author affiliations: M. Lemke, NCES; D. Miller and J. Johnston,
Education Statistics Services Institute; T. Krenzke, L. Alvarez-Rojas,
D. Kastberg, and L. Jocelyn, Westat.
For questions about content, contact Elois Scott
(elois.scott@ed.gov).
To obtain this Issue Brief (NCES 2005-117rev), call the toll-free
ED Pubs number (877-433-7827) or visit the NCES Electronic Catalog (http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch).