Beliefs and attitudes. A person may not necessarily act in numerate ways, even if she or he can demonstrate high ability on a numeracy test. The way in which a person responds to a numeracy task—including overt behavior or actions as well as cognitive processes and the propensity to adopt a critical stance—will depend not only on knowledge and skills but also on beliefs, attitudes, habits of mind, and prior practices. In some cultures, some adults, including highly educated ones, decide that they are not "good with numbers." These sentiments or self-perceptions are usually attributed to negative prior experiences they have had as pupils of mathematics (Tobias, 1993), and stand in contrast to the desired sense of "at-homeness with numbers" (Cockcroft, 1982). Such attitudes and beliefs can interfere with one's motivation to develop new mathematical skills or to tackle math-related tasks, and may also affect test performance (McLeod, 1992).

In realistic contexts, adults with a negative mathematical self-concept may elect to avoid a problem with quantitative elements, address only a portion of it, or prefer to delegate a problem, e.g., by asking a family member or a salesperson for help. Such decisions or actions are indeed the prerogative of a manager and can serve to reduce both mental and emotional load (Gal, 2000). Yet, such actions may fall short of autonomous engagement with the mathematical demands of real-world tasks (as noted in the core definition of numeracy used here), carrying negative consequences, e.g., not being able to fully achieve one's goals. Therefore, prior experiences and existing habits of coping with mathematical and numeracy situations may be influential.

Numeracy-related practices and experiences. Research suggests that, for adults as well as for children, mathematical knowledge develops both in and out of school (e.g., Schliemann & Acioly, 1989; Saxe, 1991; Lave, 1998). Saxe and his colleagues have written about the importance of cultural practice in the development of mathematical thinking and how such practices profoundly influence an individual's cognitive constructions and mathematical ideas, depending, e.g., on the artifacts or tools they use, the nature of the measurement systems in their culture, the counting or calculating devices (abacus, calculator) they use, the distribution of work among family members, or general patterns and types of social activity.

Mathematical experiences and practices, whether at work, home, when shopping, or in other contexts, can be both the result of a certain skill level, or the cause of skill levels. For this reason, it was deemed important to add several items to the Background Questionnaire that examine the frequency of performing certain related numeracy tasks in different contexts including how often artifacts such as calculators or computer spreadsheets are used.