Are large surveys of adult literacy skills as comparable over time as we think?

Abstract: Recent literature shows that younger cohorts have lower levels of literacy ceteris paribus in Canada, the United States, Norway and other developed countries. Very few explanations are provided to justify the existence of this negative cohort effect. Yet this decline has serious implications for the economy, education system and society. In this paper, we focus on Canada and replicate the results published in the literature using the same methodology (synthetic cohorts). We use the same data from surveys of adult skills, namely the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL) and the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Second, we conduct further analyses to better understand the effect of time on adults’ literacy skills. We then show that age has a negative effect on the literacy score, but also that a significant “period” effect (or rather a “survey” e

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Large-scale Assessments in Education ; 8 (2020) ; 1-23

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2020
• Creator: Vézina, Samuel ; Bélanger, Alain

Further information

• DOI: 10.1186/s40536-020-00080-3
• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-75206-3
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:50 PM CET