The International Adult Literacy Survey was a 22-country initiative conducted between 1994 and 1998. In every country nationally representative samples of adults aged 16-65 were interviewed and tested at home, using the same literacy test. The main purpose of the survey was to find out how well adults use information to function in society. Another aim was to investigate the factors that influence literacy proficiency and to compare these between countries.
This monograph presents 10 international indicators that allow readers to compare the literacy proficiency of Americans with that of other populations. The results presented in the text refer to the prose literacy scale. Similar results for the document and quantitative scales are provided in Annex A. Where applicable, the data tables in Annex A also include the standard errors of the estimates. These errors are taken into account when overall country comparisons are made.
The findings confirm that low literacy is an important issue in all regions and countries surveyed. On the whole, the findings show that American adults are at an average level of prose literacy performance, behind the Nordic countries and the Netherlands but at a par with adults in Australia, Canada and Germany. But on every indicator there are both countries that do better and countries that do worse than the United States.
The average performance results for the United States and neighboring Canada mask the fact that in both countries there is a high degree of variation in the distribution of prose literacy skills, with large numbers of people at both the lowest and the highest levels of literacy. Americans and Canadians at the top 25th percentile of the population distribution have a high average level of literacy compared with adults in all other nations surveyed, including Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. But inequality in the range of literacy scores in North America is also among the highest of the countries studied. This inequality in the distribution of literacy ability poses a large challenge to policy makers.
The challenge issued to policy makers is to ensure that all citizens have access to literacy- and learning-rich environments in their homes, their communities and at work. This implies a commitment to literacy and learning in every aspect of daily life—'lifewide' as well as 'life-long'. Accordingly, 'life-long learning' is proposed as offering an overall framework for the design and implementation of policies for improving literacy in North America. Within this framework, 10 specific policy targets and instruments are identified: