NOTE: Adults are defined as people age 16 or older living in households or prisons. Prose literacy is the knowledge and skills needed to perform prose tasks (i.e., to search, comprehend, and use information from continuous texts, such as paragraphs from stories); document literacy is the knowledge and skills needed to perform document tasks (i.e., to search, comprehend, and use information from noncontinuous texts in various formats, such as bills or prescription labels); and quantitative literacy is the knowledge and skills required to perform quantitative tasks (i.e., to identify and perform computations, either alone or sequentially, using numbers embedded in printed materials). Race categories exclude persons of Hispanic ethnicity. In 1992, respondents were allowed to identify only one race; in 2003, respondents were allowed to identify multiple races. Included in the total but not shown separately are American Indians/Alaska Natives and respondents with more than one race. Results are reported in terms of average scores on a 0–500 scale. To compare results between 1992 and 2003, the 1992 results were rescaled using the criteria and methods established for the 2003 assessment. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.

SOURCE: Kutner, M., Greenberg, E., and Baer, J. (2005). A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century (NCES 2006-470), figure 2, data from U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL).