Key Concepts and Features of the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) is the first assessment of the nation's progress in adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The 2003 NAAL is a complex assessment with several components and various types of data. The primary purpose of this publication is to describe this assessment's key features and data types. The publication reviews key elements carried over from the 1992 assessment, including a “functional” view of adult literacy and three distinct literacy areas (prose, document, and quantitative). It also introduces critical new aspects of the 2003 assessment, including new performance levels that are used to report results and new components that provide expanded data about the least-literate adults and the role of basic skills in adult literacy performance.

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