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What's New for January 2009

Indirect County and State Estimates of the Percentage of Adults at the Lowest Literacy Level for 1992 and 2003 (January 8, 2009)
The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of 18,500 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in private households. 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, describes the statistical methodology used to produce the model-dependent--indirect--estimates of the percentages of adults at the lowest literacy level for individual states and counties for 1992 and 2003.

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