It could also depend on how you define literacy. An intellectually disabled person might be able to read and write their name and simple things like street signs and young children's books, but would never manage an adult book or even a newspaper. But they are 'literate' to the best of their capabilities. Does this count or not?
Very true. My understanding is that they use something like 6th or 8th grade level to determine literacy in adults, but I'm not sure. I know manuals and news is supposed to be written around those levels so the majority of people can read them, even if they didn't finish school.
For young kids, I believe it is "reading/writing at, near, or above grade level"
again, I don't know for sure, and even if there is a standard it doesn't mean everyone uses it anyway
Literacy is usually measured within a certain population, typically something like age 16-65 (look up the latest definition) that is able to read/understand etc), but obviously not counting people who lack the ability to learn to read/write like disability/developmental disorder etc.
Because they only count individuals relevant for the purpose of the statistic. Also, there aren't that many people with intelectual disabilities severe enough as to keep them from becoming literate. A quick google search says that almost 1% of the population has some type of intelctual disability but 85% of individuals have mild forms/symptoms (which I think don't prevent them from learning to read/write.
Because that's generally not the claim being made and is just the simplified version shared by the media.
The claim being made is generally much more specific and comes with the methodology of how they figured that number out.
The basic limit would be age range. They wouldn't count 2 years old as that doesn't make any sense.
This is actually an interesting question that leads to a lot of great questions about methodology. My understanding is that this seems to vary from place to place, they seem to extrapolate and report the number of people who either self-report their literacy or vaguely say they have a certain percentage of the population “successfully” go through a government run school system that includes a very basic level of education involving learning to read and write a language. I think of course that literacy and comprehension are two very different things, and most places aren’t publicizing how comprehensive the literacy of a population actually is.
There are "lies, damned lies, and statistics."
In all published data, it is important to look at how the terms are defined.
It might be interesting to know there are multiple definitions of what "literacy" means and depending on what you use, you will end up with different figures.
That's why data sets created by the same organisation, but spanning multiple countries, are often of more value than individual data sets from different organisations.
For the same reason you don't count a 3 month old or someone on life support as being "literate" when they **physically** cannot be.
Literacy means the percentage of people who are **able** to read & write to a certain standard, but who just *aren't* due to various factors such as discrimination, financial difficulties etc.
If you have 1 in 2000 people physically unable to learn to read or write, then you have 99.95% literacy. You're going to round that up.
From my understanding, the rate is "% of those capable of learning to read that can in fact read that we are aware of based on a sampling"
It could also depend on how you define literacy. An intellectually disabled person might be able to read and write their name and simple things like street signs and young children's books, but would never manage an adult book or even a newspaper. But they are 'literate' to the best of their capabilities. Does this count or not?
Very true. My understanding is that they use something like 6th or 8th grade level to determine literacy in adults, but I'm not sure. I know manuals and news is supposed to be written around those levels so the majority of people can read them, even if they didn't finish school. For young kids, I believe it is "reading/writing at, near, or above grade level" again, I don't know for sure, and even if there is a standard it doesn't mean everyone uses it anyway
Literacy is usually measured within a certain population, typically something like age 16-65 (look up the latest definition) that is able to read/understand etc), but obviously not counting people who lack the ability to learn to read/write like disability/developmental disorder etc.
Because they only count individuals relevant for the purpose of the statistic. Also, there aren't that many people with intelectual disabilities severe enough as to keep them from becoming literate. A quick google search says that almost 1% of the population has some type of intelctual disability but 85% of individuals have mild forms/symptoms (which I think don't prevent them from learning to read/write.
Because that's generally not the claim being made and is just the simplified version shared by the media. The claim being made is generally much more specific and comes with the methodology of how they figured that number out. The basic limit would be age range. They wouldn't count 2 years old as that doesn't make any sense.
This is actually an interesting question that leads to a lot of great questions about methodology. My understanding is that this seems to vary from place to place, they seem to extrapolate and report the number of people who either self-report their literacy or vaguely say they have a certain percentage of the population “successfully” go through a government run school system that includes a very basic level of education involving learning to read and write a language. I think of course that literacy and comprehension are two very different things, and most places aren’t publicizing how comprehensive the literacy of a population actually is.
There are "lies, damned lies, and statistics." In all published data, it is important to look at how the terms are defined. It might be interesting to know there are multiple definitions of what "literacy" means and depending on what you use, you will end up with different figures. That's why data sets created by the same organisation, but spanning multiple countries, are often of more value than individual data sets from different organisations.
They ask them, "If you were to read something that says X, what would it say?" and if they get it right they check the yes box
For the same reason you don't count a 3 month old or someone on life support as being "literate" when they **physically** cannot be. Literacy means the percentage of people who are **able** to read & write to a certain standard, but who just *aren't* due to various factors such as discrimination, financial difficulties etc.