Part I

Policy Interest and Theory
Behind the Adult Literacy and
Life Skills Project

This first part of this publication provides readers with an overview of the policy issues that motivated the IALS, the study upon which the ALL study seeks to build. It identifies the explicit objectives that were set for the ALL study, the pragmatic considerations that influenced the design and documents the overall approach taken to the development and validation of the instrumentation applied in the study. The following portions of Part 1 (chapters 2 and 3), trace development of the ALL study from the general theory that underlies the ALL assessment through the research and development that led to final design. Readers are provided with insight into the thinking that went into the selection of skill domains, the process that was followed to develop assessment frameworks and related instrumentation in each domain, how the assessment instrumentation was validated, what criteria were established for measures to be included in the international comparative assessment of skill and where development managed to produce measures of sufficient quality.