presented in section 2.6. As shown in Table 7, all the national and international direct assessment were
designed and conducted for the populations of developed countries. Wagner 2008:659 remarks that such sophisticated measurement raises several issues:
―the low degree of transparency of the data when collected using the IRT
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methodology, the expensive process of creating methods of cross-cultural comparability, the long time taken to
complete a given study, and the overall cost of highly sophisticated methods in poor countries.
‖
2.3.6 Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Program LAMP
In an effort to develop a valid methodology for measuring literacy and numeracy skills of youths and adults in developing countries, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics
UIS initiated the development of Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Program LAMP in 2003 Wagner, 2008:659; UNESCO-UIS, 2009:10. LAMP has been
developed on the basis of IALS Kirsch, 2001 and ALL Murray et al., 2005 in cooperation with ETS and Statistics Canada through pilot projects in six countries:
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The Item R esponse Theory IRT is a psychometric theory ―describing the application of mathematical
models to data from questionnaires and tests as a basis for measuring abilities, attitudes, or other variables. IRT models apply mathematical functions that specify the probability of a discrete outcome, such as a
correct response to an item, in terms of person and item parameters. Person parameters may, for example, represent the ability of a student or the strength of a persons attitude. Item parameters include difficulty
location, discrimination slope or correlation, and pseudoguessing lower asymptote. … Among other things IRT theory provides a basis for evaluating how well assessments work, and how well individual
questions on assessments work. In education, Psychometricians apply IRT in order to achieve tasks such as developing and refining exams, maintaining banks of items for exams, and equating for the difficulties
of successive versions of exams for example, to allow comparisons between results over time. IRT is often referred to as latent trait theory, strong true score theory, or modern mental test theory and is
distinguished from Classical test theory‖ Kiff, Joe ed., http:psychology.wikia.comwikiItem_response_theory.
El Salvador, Kenya, Mongolia, Morocco, Niger, and the Palestinian Autonomous Territories UNESCO-UIS, 2009:4. LAMP is a direct assessment instrument measuring
the three domains of literacy: ―reading of continuous texts prose; reading of
noncontinuous texts document; and numeracy skill. ‖ In addition to these three domains,
LAMP measures lower-level reading skills through a module testing reading components: ―the ability to name letters and numbers, to process sentences rather than just decoding
words and to read paragraphs fluently ‖ ibid.:7. LAMP also uses a background
questionnaire to collect ―data on each respondent‘s socio-economic background and use
of written materials in various daily-life contexts ‖ ibid.:8. The five levels of literacy
skills adopted by LAMP can be summarized as follows ibid.:18: • Level 1 indicates persons with very poor skills, where the individual may,
for example, be unable to determine the correct amount of medicine to give a child from information printed on a package.
• Level 2 refers to respondents who can deal only with material that is simple, clearly laid out, and in which the tasks involved are not too
complex. It denotes a low level of skills, although less obvious than in Level 1. It identifies people who can read but test poorly. These
individuals may have developed coping skills to manage everyday literacy demands, but their low level of proficiency makes it difficult to face novel
demands, such as learning new job skills.
• Level 3 roughly denotes the skill level formally required for successful secondary school completion and entry to tertiary-level educational
institutions. Similar to higher levels, it requires the ability to integrate several sources of information and solve more complex problems. OECD
countries considered this level a suitable minimum for coping with the demands of everyday life and working in a
complex, ―advanced‖ society. • Level 4 and 5 describe respondents who demonstrate a command of higher
order information processing skills. Although LAMP shares with IALS and ALL a common approach to measure
literacy skills in three operationally defined domains, there are several elements
differentiating LAMP from IALS and ALL. First, IALS and ALL were developed to address increasing concerns about competitiveness and the importance of skill
development in the current economy. However, LAMP emphasizes education as a human right based on the broader set of foundations provided by the principles, values and
mandates of the UN system even though it does not ignore the importance of skill development in economy ibid.:21. Second, LAMP focuses on developing countries with
a wider array of language families and scripts while IALS and ALL were conducted mainly in industrialized countries and European languages written in the Roman alphabet
ibid.:22. Third, LAMP is primarily an attempt to enable countries to produce more robust data on literacy at the national level in a sustainable and self-reliant manner while
the ultimate goal of IALS and ALL is to produce an international report and an international dataset to be used for research purposes ibid.:23. Fourth, the most
differentiating feature of LAMP is that LAMP is the first international attempt to study people‘s ability related to basic reading components in a diversity of languages. ―The
reading components module of LAMP introduces a dimension that is strongly intertwined with the specificities of each language and script used in the assessments. Therefore, it
requires constant awareness of the peculiarities inherent in each language and a sustained alertness against standardizing beyond reasonable limits
‖ ibid.:24. UNESCO Kathmandu, in collaboration with the NFE Center and the Central
Bureau of Statistics, has recently started an initiative to assist educational authorities to obtain quality statistical data on literacy in Nepal. A one-day workshop with fifteen
participants from diverse organizations was held in Kathmandu to develop questions for getting more reliable data and to explain how to use the literacy module of the LAMP in
future national household surveys. A new household survey using the new methodology was planned to be implemented in Nepal within 2010
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and the results are not yet available to me.
2.3.7 The SmallerQuickerCheaper SQC Approach
