In the health domain individuals are increasingly expected to manager their own health needs, a task that depends on their health literacy and general literacy levels, as well as their ability to access information on the Internet.

In the consumer domain, buyers are expected to research their purchases to buy goods and services over the telephone and/or over the internet.

Parents are expected to contribute to their children's education, to read to their children and to help with homework and to interact with the school.

Citizens in pluralistic democracies are expected to develop opinions on a range of policy topics and to judge the merit of alternative responses — opinions that are best formed through reading and reflection. Basic numeracy skills are essential to understanding the complexity of the science underlying many policy debates.

Each of the ALL specific domain framework incorporated items drawn from the following life contexts: home and family, health and safety, work, societal, community and citizenship, consumer economics and further learning.

It is important to note that this is not meant to imply that individuals cannot, or do not, manage to solve a broad range of everyday problems without employing the skills assessed in ALL . Clearly they can, and do. Analysis of data from the IALS study suggests, however, that individuals would gain more independence, and would be more successful on average, if average skill levels were increased and the proportion of individuals at level 1 on each scale, the lowest skill level reduced. These effects are sufficiently large to imply large effects at the level of the firm and the community and, ultimately, at the level of entire economies and societies.