What is the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)?

2. What is the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL)? • Assessment of English-language literacy among adults (age 16 and older) living in the United States • Focus on authentic, everyday tasks that are encountered regularly in the lives of adults in the United States. • Given to a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 people

3. Definition of literacy • Literacy is the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential • Three literacy areas • Prose • Document • Quantitative

4. Prose literacy • The knowledge and skills needed to perform prose tasks, i.e. to search, comprehend, and use continuous texts. • Editorials, news stories, brochures, or instructional materials.

5. Document literacy • The knowledge and skills needed to perform document tasks, i.e. to search, comprehend, and use non-continuous texts in various formats. • Job applications, payroll forms, schedules, maps, or drug or food labels.

6. Quantitative literacy • The knowledge and skills required to perform quantitative tasks, i.e. to identify and perform computations, either alone or sequentially; using numbers embedded in printed materials. • Balancing a checkbook, figuring out a tip, completing a form, or determining the amount of interest on a loan.

7. Who was assessed • Adults age 16 and older living primarily in households • Nationally representative sample of over 19,000 adults • Prison sample of nearly 1,200 inmates • State samples of adults from six participating states: MA, OK, KY, MO, NY, MD (an additional 5,560 adults). • National results based on combined national, prison, and state samples.

8. How NAAL is administered • Conducted one-on-one, in the participant’s home or in the prison • Each adult takes only a portion of the assessment • Booklets include questions in all three types of literacy • Questions are open-ended with most requiring short written responses • Nearly half (45 percent) of the 2003 tasks were also used in 1992

9. Stages of the assessment interview

10. Core Screening Questions • Questions asked in English or Spanish • Seven easy questions • Identified those who could not take rest of assessment

11. Stages of the assessment interview

12. Adult Literacy Supplement Assessment (ALSA) • A special assessment intended to evaluate skills of low-literate adults • Taken by adults who do not “pass” the core screening questions • Materials are highly familiar and tangible (e.g., cake mix box) • The questions tap basic reading skills (e.g., Please point to the word “water”) • Directions and tasks orally administered in English or Spanish

13. Accommodating adultswith special needs • Receive additional time, within reason, to complete the assessment • Allowed to use whatever aids they usually use to work with written materials (e.g., a magnifying glass) • Those unable to write (e.g., because of severe arthritis) may dictate responses • Assessment is administered one-on-one in the participant’s home

14. Accommodating non-native speakers of English • Background questionnaire is always administered orally in either English or Spanish New in 2003 • General instructions and specific questions for the core screening tasks can be given in either English or Spanish. The general instructions are given orally • ALSA instructions, questions given orally in English or Spanish • Participants with a native language other than English or Spanish may attempt the core screening tasks—and take either ALSA or the main NAAL, if they are able—even if they cannot complete the background questionnaire

15. How NAAL is scored • Trained staff seeks evidence that adults can use printed materials to accomplish everyday literacy tasks • Writing errors are overlooked as long as the overall meaning is correct

16. How results are reported • Reported for adults overall and by race/ethnicity, Language spoken before starting school, Gender, Age, Educational attainment, Employment status • Reported as • Average Scores (0-500) • Performance Levels

17. 2003 NAAL Performance Levels • Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, Proficient • Below Basic is a default category • Performance levels are specific to each type of literacy: prose, document, and quantitative • Comparisons of the two assessments was made possible by re-computing the 1992 scores using the 2003 analysis procedures and performance levels • Nonliterate in English category is reported separately

18. Performance Levels: 1992 vs. 2003 • NCES used 5 performance levels to report the 1992 results • Level 1 (the lowest of 5 levels) included 21 percent of American adults • Some of these adults were successful at performing the relatively undemanding Level 1 tasks; others responded to few or none of the tasks • Combining these groups in the same level blurred the distinction among adults at the lower end and led to confusion • NCES commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to evaluate the 1992 levels • The Academy evaluated the 1992 levels in an open, public, and scientific way and recommended new levels

19. The Nonliterate in English category

20. Original 1992 Literacy Levels Percentage of Adults in Each 1992 Literacy Level

21. Percentage of adults scoring at each performance level based on reanalysis of the 1992 data

22. 2003 NAAL Report • Overall literacy of population for prose, document and quantitative literacy • Results by race/ethnicity, Language spoken before starting school, Gender, Age, Educational attainment, Employment status • Changes in prose, document and quantitative literacy since the 1992 assessment • Characteristics of adults with Below Basic literacy • Sample tasks and percentage of adults who performed the tasks correctly

23. NAAL Sample Questions • Almost 100 different assessment tasks • Percentage of adults who responded correctly on each question • http://nces.ed.gov/naal/TestQuestions.asp

24. Thank you. http://nces.ed.gov/naal