Adult Literacy in Northern Ireland

Author(s): Kevin Sweeney, Brendan Morgan and Demot Donnelly
Commissioned by: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
Document Type: Report
Year:

1998

Publisher: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
Place of Publication: Belfast
ISBN: 0337043345
Subject Area(s): Education


Background to the Research

  • This research formed part of an international programme of surveys known as the International Adult Literacy Survey. The Northern Ireland Survey was carried out by the Central Survey Unit of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and was commissioned by the Department of Education Northern Ireland, the Training and Employment Agency and the interdepartmental Social Steering Group.

Research Approach

  • The survey was the first literacy survey to be carried out in Northern Ireland on a representative probability sample of adults of working age. It set out to profile the literacy abilities of adults aged between 16-65 using an internationally agreed measurement instrument and survey implementation protocols which covered among other things, interviewer instructions and scoring procedures. The survey measured three dimensions of literacy:
    • Prose - the knowledge and skills required to understand and use information from texts such as newspaper articles and passages from fiction.
    • Document Literacy - the knowledge and skills required to locate and use information contained in various formats such as timetables, charts and forms.
    • Quantitative Literacy - the knowledge and skills required to apply arithmetic operations either alone or sequentially such as calculating savings from a sale advertisement or working out the interest required to achieve a desired return on investment.

  • Performance on each of these scales was grouped into five literacy levels, Level 1 representing the lowest ability range and level 5, the highest. Because of the small proportion of people at Level 5, data are presented for Levels 4 and 5 combined.

Main Findings

Distribution of literacy skills

  • Twenty four per cent of the population of working age performed at Level 1 on the prose scale, 30% at Level 2, 31% at Level 3 and 15% at Level 4/5. The distribution was similar on the document and quantitative scales. Among men, performance on the prose scale was poorer than on either the document or quantitative scales whereas women performed worse on the document scale.

  • Whilst the skill levels of men and women were similar on the prose scale, significantly higher proportions of men than women were at Level 4/5/5 on both document and quantitative literacy (17% and 23% of men compared with 13% and 15% of women).

  • On both the prose and document scales a higher proportion of those aged 45 scored at Level 1, but this was only significantly so for the over 55s. The variation in skills with age was not so obvious on the quantitative scale.

  • The performance of those aged up to 45 years was similar on all three literacy scales.

  • Literacy was strongly associated with education, the percentage of people performing at the higher literacy levels increasing with increasing education. Those with lower levels of education were more likely to be at literacy Levels 1 and 2.

  • Those in employment and full-time students were more likely than the unemployed or economically inactive to perform at the highest literacy levels, Level 4/5, on all three dimensions.

  • The unemployed were twice as likely as those in employment to perform at level 1.

  • Those in the lowest two income groups were more likely to perform at Level 1 than those in the two highest income groups.

  • Respondents in receipt of Social Security benefits (excluding pensions and Child Benefit) were much more likely to have low literacy skills than those not in receipt of benefits.

  • On all three dimensions there were no significant differences in the overall distribution of literacy skills between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom as a whole.

Literacy and work

  • Expanding industries such as the financial, Information Technology and research sectors has larger proportions of employees at the higher literacy levels.

  • Employees in declining industries such as manufacturing or construction, were more likely to be at the lower literacy than those in other occupations. Just over a third of professional occupations performed at Level 4/5 on prose literacy, with higher proportions performing at that level for both the document and quantitative dimensions.

  • Generally, those who reported engaging in literacy activities at least once a week as part of their job demonstrated higher literacy skills in each dimension than those who reported engaging in these activities less frequently.

  • In those occupations with poor average proficiency levels on the three literacy dimensions, substantial proportions of workers were regularly required to undertake activities that required reading skills.

  • Those with the greatest income from employment were those with the highest literacy skills; over half (52%) of those in the highest income group performed at Level 4/5 on quantitative literacy and a further 31% were at Level 3 with very few demonstrating low quantitative ability.

Literacy in everyday life

  • Those who read books daily were more likely than those who never read books to be at Levels 3 or above on all three literacy dimensions.

  • Thirty eight per cent of respondents considered there reading skills as 'excellent' and 46% described them as 'good' even though 54% of all respondents were at the lowest two levels on the prose scale.

People With low literacy skills

  • People at each end of the literacy distribution each formed a clearly defined, relatively homogenous group whilst people on Levels 2 and 3 were more diverse in their characteristics.

  • People performing at Level 1 on the literacy scales were predominantly older, and had low levels of education. They were more likely than people at higher levels to be unemployed, and to have low incomes.

  • Those at Level 4/5 were predominantly young (aged 45 or under), with high levels of education, although a considerable proportion (43% on the prose scale) had not continued their formal education beyond lower secondary level. Those at Level 4/5 on the document and quantitative scales were more likely to be men. People at 4/5 were the most likely to be in employment.

Literacy skills in other countries

  • Northern Ireland's distribution was similar to that in other English speaking countries, with slightly higher proportions at Levels 2 and 3 than there are at Levels 1 and Level 4/5.

  • Relative to other countries, Northern Ireland and other English speaking countries appear more polarised with relatively large proportions of the population at both the lower and upper literacy levels.

  • In Northern Ireland, as in all countries except the USA, the proportion at literacy Levels 1 and 3 was highest in the oldest age-groups.

  • In all countries people with higher levels of educational attainment tended to perform at higher literacy levels in all three scales but the relationship was stronger in some countries than in others.

  • In most countries, people performing at the lower literacy levels were more likely to be unemployed than those who performed at the higher literacy levels.

  • In Northern Ireland and in all other countries the expected relationship between literacy and occupation was observed with large proportions of managers/professionals and technicians performing at the higher literacy levels on all three scales.

Literacy in the two communities

  • On all three mean scores, Protestants had higher mean scores than Catholics.

  • A higher proportion of Catholics performed at Level 1 on all three scales.

  • At Level 4/5, the proportion of Protestants was significantly greater than that of Catholics on all three scales.

  • It can be suggested that there is evidence that the gap in literacy skills between Catholics and Protestants is declining.

  • The association between religion and literacy scores can be accounted for by the fact that both are related to education (own and parents), occupational status or income. The authors point out that these statistical relationships do not translate directly into causal explanations. It is not possible to determine from the data of this survey whether higher educational levels explain the difference in literacy scores directly or relative advantage/disadvantage in economic position provides more opportunity to use, develop and maintain literacy skills.
 

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