8. Glossary

ALL – the Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey, which was conducted by 12 countries between 2003 and 2008/09 (note that at the beginning of 2008 three of these countries have still to complete their participation in ALL).

Document literacy – the ability to read and understand discontinuous texts (such as charts, maps, tables, job applications, payroll forms and timetables).

Educational participation – records the highest level of schooling completed by a person. Note that educational participation is not the same as qualifications attained; for example, a person could complete Year 11 (or the equivalent) but not achieve a qualification. In this document, educational participation is summarised in three levels:

• lower secondary or less the person completed at most Year 10 (or the equivalent)
• higher secondary the person completed more than Year 10 (or the equivalent) but no more than Year 13 (or the equivalent)
• tertiary the person participated in a tertiary education programme.

IALS – the International Adult Literacy Survey, which was conducted by 23 countries/regions between 1994 and 1998.

Higher literacy or numeracy levels 3, 4 or 5.

Industry – this information was recorded using the ISIC (International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities) classification. Here, for statistical robustness, this information is summarised (according to groups of ISIC categories) as follows. Examples of industries in each group follow the group name.

• agriculture and fisheries agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing
  
• manufacture manufacturing of all types
• construction construction of all types
• trade wholesale trade, retail trade, hospitality
• transport and communications transport, storage, and communications
• finance and real estate financing, insurance, real estate and business service
• health and education community, social and personal service.

There were two other groups of ISIC categories (mining & quarrying, and electricity, gas, & water), but the membership of these categories was too small to allow robust statistical analyses.

Labour force status – for the IALS and ALL surveys the respondents are provided with several possible answers to the question “What is your current work situation?” The one-word summaries of these answers together with the answers themselves follow:

• employed summarises the possible answer “Employed or self-employed”
• unemployed summarises the possible answer “Not employed and looking for work”
• retired summarises the possible answer “Retired”
• student summarises the possible answer “A student (including work programmes)”
• homemaker summarises the possible answer “Doing unpaid household work”.

Respondents can also respond with the possible answer “Other”, but this is not reported.

Levels prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy are assigned five cognitive levels.

Level 1

Read simple documents, accomplish literal information-matching with no distracting information, and perform simple one-step calculations.

Level 2

Search a document and filter out some simple distracting information, make low-level inferences, and execute one- or two-step calculations and estimations.

Level 3

Perform more complex information-filtering, sometimes requiring inferences, and manipulate mathematical symbols, perhaps in several stages.

Level 4

Integrate information from a long passage, perform more complex inferences and complete multiple-step calculations requiring some reasoning.

Level 5

Make high-level inferences or syntheses, use specialised knowledge, filter out multiple distractors, and understand and use abstract mathematical ideas with justification.

Problem-solving has been assigned four cognitive levels. For a description of typical tasks for the problem-solving domain (and a fuller description of prose and document literacy along with numeracy), see pages 17 and 18 of Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey.

Low literacy or numeracy levels 1 or 2.

Mean – in general, the mean of a set of scores is the sum of the scores divided by the number of scores.

Numeracy – the ability to read and process mathematical and numeric information in diverse situations.

Occupation – this information was recorded using the ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occupation) classification. Here, for statistical robustness, this information is summarised (according to ISCO major group title) as follows (examples of occupations in each group follow the group name):

• manager legislators, senior administrators and managers
• professional professionals
• technician technicians and associate professionals
• clerical clerical workers, secretaries, receptionists
• service and sales service workers and shop and market sales workers
• agriculture and fisheries orchardists, fishery workers, farmers
• trades craft and related trades workers
• machine plant and machine operators and assemblers
• elementary cleaners, labourers.

Problem-solving – the ability to reason and think analytically in situations where no routine procedure exists.

Prose literacy – the ability to read and understand continuous texts (such as news stories, editorials, brochures and instruction manuals).

Quintile – for the purposes of this document, a quintile is one of five subpopulations of approximately equal size into which a population can be divided. For example, the lowest income quintile is the fifth of the population with the lowest income.

Self-assessed numeracy – the respondent’s assessment of their own numeracy skill.

• Higher self-assessed numeracy skill refers to those respondents who either strongly agreed or agreed with the statement “I am good with numbers and calculations”.
• Low self-assessed numeracy skill refers to those respondents who either strongly disagreed or disagreed with the statement “I am good with numbers and calculations”.

Simpson’s Paradox – a statistical phenomenon whereby an observed statistical pattern is changed or reversed in the presence of a previously hidden weighting variable. Here is a simple example. Peter catches a fish two days a week and Thomas catches a fish four days a week, but Peter catches more fish per week than Thomas. The apparent paradox is explained by the hidden fact that Peter’s fish are more than twice as heavy as Thomas’s.

In Figure 2.2 the proportion of the population represented by each column of the graph (the hidden weighting variable) is not displayed in the figure. So one might expect that the decrease represented in the first, second and third pairs of columns would result in a decrease in the fourth pair of columns. However, this is not the case, resulting in an apparent paradox. In the presence of the weighting variable (as displayed in Figure 2.1), the apparent paradox is explained.

Up-skilling – undertaking further education and training.

• Formal – participation in any course that is part of a programme of study leading toward a certificate, degree or diploma.
• Non-formal – participation in any course that is not part of a programme of study leading toward a certificate, degree or diploma.
• Self-directed or none – either no participation in any up-skilling activities or participation in up-skilling activities such as guided tours, trade fairs, learning from instructional media, etc.

Very high literacy or numeracy level 4 or 5.

Very low literacy or numeracy level 1.