The term literacy is used in preference to reading because it is likely to convey more precisely to a nonexpert audience what the survey is measuring. Reading is often understood as simply decoding or reading aloud, whereas the intention of the adult surveys is to measure something broader and deeper. Researchers studying literacy within particular contexts noted that different cultures and groups may value different kinds of literacy practices (Heath, 1980; Sticht, 1975; Szwed, 1981). Heath, for example, found that uses for reading could be described in terms of instrumental, social interactional, news-related, memory supportive, substitutes for oral messages, provision of a permanent record, and personal confirmation. The fact that people read different materials for different purposes implies a range of proficiencies that may not be well captured by signing one's name, completing a certain number of years of schooling, or scoring at an eighth-grade level on a test of academic reading comprehension.

… using printed and written information

This phrase draws attention to the fact that panel members view literacy not as a set of isolated skills associated with reading and writing, but more importantly as the application of those skills for specific purposes in specific contexts. When literacy is studied within varying contexts, diversity becomes its hallmark. First, people engage in literacy behaviors for a variety of uses or purposes (Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz, 1981; Heath, 1980; Mikulecky, 1982; Sticht, 1978). These uses vary across contexts (Heath, 1980; Venezky, 1983) and among people within the same context (Kirsch and Guthrie, 1984a). This variation in use leads to an interaction with a broad range of materials that have qualitatively different linguistic forms (Diehl, 1980; Jacob, 1982; Miller, 1982). In some cases, these different types of literacy tasks have been associated with different cognitive strategies or reading behaviors (Crandall, 1981; Kirsch and Guthrie, 1984b; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Sticht, 1978, 1982).

… to function in society, to achieve one's goals,
and to develop one's knowledge and potential.

This phrase is meant to capture the full scope of situations in which literacy plays a role in the lives of adults, from private to public, from school to work, to lifelong learning and active citizenship. "[T]o achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential" points to the view that literacy enables the fulfillment of individual aspirations—both defined ones such as graduation or obtaining a job, and those less defined and less immediate, which extend and enrich one's personal life. The phrase "to function in society" is meant to acknowledge that literacy provides individuals with a means of contributing to, as well as benefiting from, society. Literacy skills are generally recognized as important for nations to maintain or improve their standard of living and to compete in an increasingly global marketplace. Yet, they are equally as important for individual participation in technologically advancing societies with their formal institutions, complex legal systems, and large government programs.

Organizing the domain

Having defined the domain of literacy and having laid out the set of assumptions that were made in developing the definition, it is important to think about how to organize the domain. This organization needs to focus on how to report the scores that result from administering a pool of literacy tasks. This is an important issue because how the domain is organized can affect test design. Because some believe that reading is not a single, one-dimensional skill, literacy is not necessarily best represented by a single scale or single score along that scale. Yet determining how many and which scales should be used for reporting literacy scores is crucial for ensuring that sufficient numbers of tasks are developed to define and interpret these scales adequately.