Adult literacy skills are critical assets of individuals as well as societies in terms of economic (e.g., human capital) and social well-being. Thus, it is important to monitor the long-term trends and sources of skill gain/loss. Yet, temporal sources of adult literacy skill variation are understudied. The current study analyzed three comparable,…

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are ushering in a large and rapid technological transformation. Understanding how AI capabilities relate to human skills and how they develop over time is crucial for understanding this process. In 2016, the OECD assessed AI capabilities with the OECD's Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The present report…

The authors examined the state of United States student academic readiness for higher education from a global perspective utilizing data from the Organization of Economic and Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests over a half a million 15 year old student's skills and knowledge.…

In this study it is aimed to describe and evaluate comparatively the reading literacy exam results, the finance of education and schools, and socio-cultural status of parents in Turkey and the top-five OECD countries, Finland, Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand respectively, in the light reports and publications by OECD regarding PISA 2003 and…

This report comes from a three-year program of research, "Securing Their Future: Older Workers and the Role of VET." Previous work from the program looked at how well workers were matched to their jobs, based on their literacy and numeracy skills and the use of these skills in the workplace. In a continuation of that work, the research…

The International Adult Literacy Survey, IALS, is the first international comparative study of reading ability and reading habits among adults. The IALS was carried out in seven countries in Europe and North America during 1994 and 1995. Swedish participation in the study consisted of a representative sample of the population, 16 years of age and…

Systematic knowledge about the dimensions and levels of literacy and information about its distribution are prerequisites for forming good educational policy. This issue discusses the conduct and findings of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). The IALS was not intended to rank literacy skills across countries, but was intended to make…

This paper discusses the use of telephone surveys as a substitute for, or addition to, the use of door-to-door surveys in assessing adult literacy ability. Part 1 addresses issues of validity in adult literacy assessment, including the concepts of construct or inferential validity and action or use validity. Part 2 is a review of related research…

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) was a collaborative effort by seven governments and three intergovernmental organizations to describe and compare the literacy skills of people from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Each country drew a probability sample from which results…

This book contains 10 papers based on a data set from the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey, which collected data from more than 20,000 individual respondents in samples representative of the adult populations in 6 countries: Canada, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The papers are: "Foreword"…

The question of whether inequality in skills explains inequality of earnings across advanced countries was examined through a review of data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), which examined the prose, document, and quantitative literacy skills of adults in 12 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and…

This report describes a project originally intended to identify demographic patterns among adults with low literacy skills in each Canadian province. The project was carried out between March 2000 and June 2001 under the auspices of Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL). The project was based on the assumption that demographic information about…

Data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) were analyzed to compare the incidence and volume of continuing education (CE) and training among adults in the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The following were among the…

The Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL) is a large-scale co-operative effort undertaken by governments, national statistics agencies, research institutions and multi-lateral agencies. The development and management of the study were co-ordinated by Statistics Canada and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in collaboration with the…