• Reports and articles that did not meet the "Canadian" criteria were skimmed for the relevance of the content to this report. If the content was deemed to be relevant and informative, the report was included. Reports and articles from Tasmania, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Paris and Croatia have been included in the final list. Some international reports and articles sounded interesting and relevant but full-text copies could not be obtained.
• The research team decided to avoid, wherever possible, literature that would be reviewed by another research team associated with the Adult Learning Knowledge Centre. Therefore, we did not go in depth into the literature related to literacy, gender, cultural studies, distance education, and e-learning – although a few such reports have been included.
• We limited our perusal of the literature in the Health Education field. While some of these reports and articles might have been relevant to this report, a thorough search of the relevant databases was beyond the time available to the team. We understood Health Education to be the purview of the Health Education Knowledge Centre and assumed that the researchers attached to that Centre would address the issue of barriers and access to health-related learning opportunities
• The same decision was made about learning by First Nations learners and learning in the workplace.

We did include studies and reports on: older adults; adult learners with disabilities (physical, sensory and learning); and immigrants and refugees. Our review of reports and studies about barriers to learning opportunities for racial and ethnic groups is limited because we could not obtain access to several likely-sounding items.

2.2 Databases searched

We searched databases using the terms: "adult learning," "adult learners," "barriers" and "access." We attempted to use the term "Canadian" in our searches but found that many databases do not enter information on nationality.

We began by searching eleven databases (listed below). As we worked our way through these databases, we found others that looked promising; and time permitting, would have been searched. These additional databases are also listed below.

The following databases are listed alphabetically rather than in order of quality of entries or importance in the field of adult education. Details on each database are provided in Appendix A.