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The Adult Literacy survey carried out in Northern Ireland in 1996 was part of an international programme of surveys known as the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS).
Between 1994 and 1999, three rounds of data collection on IALS were carried out involving the following countries; Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia and the Italian-speaking population of Switzerland, Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Germany, Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the French- and German- speaking regions of Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the United States.
The funding for the survey was provided by:
- The Department of Education Northern Ireland
- The Training and Employment Agency; and
- The inter-departmental Social Steering Group (SSG);
The survey was the first literacy survey to be carried out in Northern Ireland on a representative probability sample of adults of working age. It set out to profile the literacy abilities of adults aged 16-65 using an internationally agreed measurement instrument.
The definition of literacy used in IALS was:
“Using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one´s goals and to develop one´s knowledge and potential.”
This definition did not treat literacy as something that people either have or do not have, but rather defined literacy as a broad range of skills required in a varied range of context. The survey measured three dimensions of literacy:
Prose literacy: the knowledge and skills required to understand and use information from texts such as newspaper articles and passages of fiction.
Document literacy: the knowledge and skills required to locate and use information contained in various formats such as timetables, graphs, charts and forms.
Quantitative literacy: the knowledge and skills required to apply arithmetic operations, either alone or sequentially, to numbers embedded in printed materials, such as calculating savings from a sale advertisement or working out the interest required to achieve a desired return on an investment.
Performance on each of these scales was grouped into five literacy levels; level 1 represented the lowest ability range and level 5 the highest.
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