Technical Report and Data File User's Manual for 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in households and correctional institutions. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL and NALS produced direct estimates of Prose, Document, and Quantitative literacy, each reported on a 0 to 500 scale and on four performance levels: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient based on this scale. This report provides information on the 2003 NAAL development and implementation, including development of survey instruments; field test and main assessment sample design; assessment items and scoring rubrics; data collection process and quality of the data; weighting, scaling, treatment of missing data, and data analysis. In addition, the NAAL technical report includes detail information on the development of NAAL innovative additions--Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN) and Adult Literacy Supplement Assessment (ALSA). Other sections of the report contain information about health literacy cognitive items, data collection and analysis in the US correctional institutions and a user's manual on how to use statistical programs for analyzing NAAL data. The NAAL Technical Report and Data File User's Manual is a key resource for secondary data analysts and for those who want to understand how NAAL was developed and implemented.

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