The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey: Age and Literacy

Publication Details

This report is the fourth in a series of four that investigate the initial results of the ALL survey. It presents an overview of New Zealanders’ skills in relation to age, and any changes since 1996.

Author(s): Paul Satherley and Elliot Lawes, Research Division, Ministry of Education.

Date Published: August 2008

This report is available as a download (please refer to the 'Downloads/Links' inset box, top right).
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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 had still to complete their participation in ALL).
Document Literacy	Deals with discontinuous text, such as graphs, charts and tables.
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.
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-leve 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.
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	Addresses mathematical and numerical information.
Problem-solving	Involves analytical thinking, reasoning and logic. 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.
Prose Literacy	Is concerned with continuous text, of the type found in books and newspaper articles.
Up-skilling	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.