Part A:

Conceptual foundations

This part of the report presents a framework for the assessment of numeracy skills in the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL). It begins by examining different perspectives that informed the conceptualization of numeracy developed for the ALL survey, and reviews some factors known to affect adults' numerate behavior, such as literacy, beliefs and attitudes, and prior practices, some of which are studied by specific questions in the ALL Background Questionnaire (BQ). Next, a definition of numeracy is presented, followed by an elaboration on the facets of numerate behavior that guided the development of items for the ALL Numeracy scale. Finally, several factors that are thought to influence the complexity or difficulty of numeracy tasks are presented; these factors are important both for development of items as well as for interpretation of the survey results. The actual stages of item development and pilot testing are described in parts B and C of the report.

1. Adult numeracy: Influences and perspectives

The construct "numeracy" does not have a universally accepted definition, nor agreement about how it differs from "mathematics." For some educators and officials, the term numeracy implies a set of simple skills involving the ability to carry out basic computations or arithmetical operations. In contrast, adult numeracy as viewed here is a broad construct that involves a range of knowledge, skills, and supporting processes. This section presents a review of influences or trends that have led to the conceptualization of numeracy employed in the ALL survey, and organizes them under five headings: Workplace perspectives, Broader life purposes, Educational perspectives, Research perspectives, and Assessment schemes. (These five headings or areas are interconnected and not mutually exclusive, as developments in one area often influence thinking in other areas).

1.1 Workplace perspectives

Over the last two decades, many countries have launched large-scale efforts aimed to define "core skills" or "key competencies" that workers should have, in response to the need to maintain economic competitiveness and improve employability of adults and school graduates. As workplaces are becoming more concerned with involving all workers in improving workplace efficiency and quality processes, the importance of numeracy skills is growing, and they have been shown to be a key factor in workplace success ( Jones, 1995; Murnane, Willett and Levy, 1995). Basic computational knowledge has always been considered as part of the fundamental skills that adults need to possess, but the recent skills frameworks describe in specific terms the need for workers to possess a much broader range of mathematical skills. Examples exist in many countries, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and other OECD countries. The following descriptions are indicative of the nature of such efforts.