Abstract
Purpose. Adult literacy is of social, political, and educational concern. There are many measures of change in reading and writing skills, but few of change in use of literacy in the personal lives of learners. The study used a participatory assessment process to investigate differences in change in literacy habits by selected variables. Methodology. This study first measured the differences between before and after scores for reading and writing habits of sixty-eight adult learners who had been in the California Literacy Campaign (CLC) for more than twelve months, then measured differences in change in reading and writing habits by selected personal attributes: number of months in the CLC; highest grade completed; age; employment status; race or ethnicity; and gender. These measures were made using the California Adult Learner Progress Evaluation Process (CALPEP). This descriptive study used a self-report survey design to collect data to determine change in literacy habits with respect to the selected attributes. Parametric tests of difference were used to analyze the data. Findings. A significant difference was found between before and after scores for both reading habits and writing habits, making further examination by the selected attributes worthwhile. Among the selected attributes, a significant difference was found in change in reading habits between learners with eight or fewer years of schooling and learners with nine or more years of schooling. Learners with fewer years of schooling improved significantly more than did learners with more years of schooling. Differences in change in reading habits were not significant by the other selected attributes, and differences in change in writing habits were not significant by any of the selected attributes. Differences in change in writing habits were consistently lower than differences in change in reading habits. Conclusions and recommendations. It is evident that the CLC is making a significant difference in the personal literacy habits of its participants, and that CALPEP is a useful participatory assessment process. It is recommended that CLC participants approach reading and writing as concurrent, related literacy activities. Further research is needed on the characteristics of adult literacy learners who select tutorial versus classroom settings.