Adult Literacy in America - National Center for Education Statistics ...

generating information. In the locating tasks, readers are asked to match
information that is given in a question or directive with either literal or
synonymous information in the text or document. Integrating tasks require the
reader to incorporate two or more pieces of information located in different
parts of the text or document. Generating tasks require readers not only to
process information located in different parts of the material, but also to go
beyond that information by drawing on their knowledge about a subject or by
making broad text-based inferences.
Quantitative tasks require readers to perform arithmetic operations —
addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division — either singly or in
combination. In some tasks, the type of operation that must be performed is
obvious from the wording of the question, while in other tasks the readers must
infer which operation is to be performed. Similarly, the numbers that are
required to perform the operation can, in some cases, be easily identified,
while in others, the numbers that are needed are embedded in text. Moreover,
some quantitative tasks require the reader to explain how the problem would
be solved rather than perform the calculation, and on some tasks the use of a
simple four-function calculator is required.
Defining the Literacy Levels
The relative difficulty of the assessment tasks reflects the interactions among
the various task characteristics described here. As shown in Figure 1 in the
Introduction to this report, the score point assigned to each task is the point at
which the individuals with that proficiency score have a high probability of
responding correctly. In this survey, an 80 percent probability of correct
response was the criterion used. While some tasks were at the very low end
of the scale and some at the very high end, most had difficulty values in the
200 to 400 range.
By assigning scale values to both the individuals and tasks, it is possible to
see how well adults with varying proficiencies performed on tasks of varying
difficulty. While individuals with low proficiency tend to perform well on tasks
with difficulty values equivalent to or below their level of proficiency, they are
less likely to succeed on tasks with higher difficulty values. This does not mean
that individuals with low proficiency can never succeed on more difficult
literacy tasks — that is, on tasks whose difficulty values are higher than their
proficiencies. They may do so some of the time. Rather, it means that their
probability of success is not as high. In other words, the more difficult the task
relative to their proficiency, the lower their likelihood of responding correctly.
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