Frequently Asked Questions - ALL

• What is the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey?
• What can we learn from ALL?
• How was ALL data collected?
• When was the data collected?
• How does ALL compare to other national and international assessments of adult literacy and lifeskills?

How does ALL compare to other national and international assessments of adult literacy and lifeskills?

The Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALL) is an international comparative study designed to provide participating countries, including the United States, with information about the skills of their adult populations. At the same time, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) also provides information about the skills of the U.S. adult population. ALL focuses on providing international benchmarks while NAAL provides state-level estimates of adult literacy for interested states in order to furnish state/national benchmarks. ALL surveyed adults aged 16-65 in order to focus on the active labor force; NAAL does not set an upper age limit for adults.

NAAL and ALL also cover somewhat different domains, although both address prose and document literacy.* NAAL covers prose and document literacy and quantitative literacy, while areas covered in ALL include prose and document literacy, numeracy, and problem solving/analytical reasoning. The numeracy domain in ALL addresses a broader range of mathematical application skills than NAAL's quantitative literacy domain. Additional ALL background items examine familiarity with information and communication technologies and health and well-being of respondents.

Each study is intended to link to an earlier study (for NAAL, the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey or NALS; for ALL, the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey or IALS).

* Frameworks for prose and document literacy for the NAAL and ALL are the same; actual items for the two assessments differ.

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