Chapter 2: Comparative profiles of adult skills

Overview and highlights

This chapter presents a comparative perspective on the levels and distributions of adult skills in four domains – prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem solving – for the countries that collected data in the first round of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). The first part of the analysis displays the basic country distributions for each skill domain. The second tracks changes in the distributions of prose and document literacy skills over time for the countries that participated in both ALL and its predecessor, the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) – Canada, Norway, Switzerland and the United States. Finally, the analysis focuses on how skill distributions interact with key demographic variables such as age and gender.

Key findings presented in this chapter are:

• The ALL results confirm the IALS findings that many adults have difficulties coping with literacy and numeracy related demands that are common in modern life and work. Although relative proportions vary, there are significant numbers of adults with low skills in all the countries surveyed.

• Depending on the country, between one-third and over two-thirds of adult populations do not attain skill Level 3, the level considered by experts as a suitable minimum level for coping with the increasing demands of the emerging knowledge society and information economy (OECD and Statistics Canada, 1995).

• Both the average performance levels and the distributions of skills among adult populations differ substantially between countries. Some perform better than others in terms of average performance, with Norway performing among the highest on all four scales.

• The spread in literacy scores between adults at the lowest and highest skill levels is significantly smaller in some countries (Norway and Switzerland) and larger in others (Italy and the United States).

• Some countries have a relative advantage in a particular skill domain. For example, Switzerland performs comparatively well on the numeracy scale whereas Bermuda scores better on the prose scale. Norway is a country that does consistently well in all four skills domains.

• Measured by the difference in average scores between the 5th and 95th percentiles, all countries in ALL display less inequality in skill between the highest and lowest performing groups than in IALS. The exception is Norway, where skill inequality was already low in IALS.

• Changes in mean country performance are not substantial, but the results show some improvement among the five per cent of adults with the lowest scores.

• Only the German speaking population in Switzerland has recorded an increase in its average performance on the prose and document literacy scale between the IALS and ALL survey periods.

• Age and skills are inversely related in all countries. Younger cohorts tend to score higher on average and have larger proportions at higher levels of skills. Even after controlling for educational attainment the relationship remains negative. There is also wider variation in performance among older cohorts.

• The relationship between age and skills is complex because age represents an accumulation of life experiences that are likely to impact on the development and even loss of skills throughout the lifespan.

• Gender interacts with the distribution of adult skills and confirms previously observed patterns. In general, men tend to display an advantage in numeracy and document literacy skills, while women tend to display an advantage in prose literacy. Although women in Bermuda show a noticeable advantage in problem solving, these types of skill appear gender neutral in Canada, Italy, Norway and Switzerland (German and French speaking populations).