Funded by the Bureau of Adult, Vocational, and Technical Education of the Office of Education, the Adult Performance Level (APL) study has as its objectives: to describe adult functional literacy in pragmatic, behavioral terms and to develop devices for the assessment of literacy which will be useful at a variety of operational levels. Two years of research has led to three conclusions: literacy is a construct which is meaningful only in a specific cultural context; literacy is two-dimensional, rather than uni-dimensional; and literacy is a construct which is directly related (in a mathematical sense) to success in adult life. To define success the APL uses an index which is a composite of income, level of education, occupational prestige, and a measure of expressed personal satisfaction with one's vocation and general status in life. In order to estimate population parameters and to perform a final validation of the items and objectives, a national survey on the areas of occupational knowledge and consumer economics, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation according to APL specifications, has just been completed. The results suggest that far more adults are "illiterate," in the sense of being able to apply skills to problem areas which are derived from pragmatic adult requirements, than was expected. (WR)