# Adult Literacy: Make Survey Instructions Usable Without Labeling Participants

Adult literacy and surveys: improve instructions, test the participation process, and offer assistance without labeling or diagnosing participants.

- Canonical URL: https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/adult-literacy-make-survey-instructions-usable-without-labeling-participants
- Author: Harmate Team
- Published: 2026-09-24
- Updated: 2026-09-24T00:40:55.564528+00:00
- Language: en

## Content

# Adult Literacy: Make Survey Instructions Usable Without Labeling Participants

One participant leaves a question blank. Another answers in three words. A third asks what “a significant professional situation” means. These observations do not tell you who understands, who can write, or who lacks motivation. They first give you a reason to examine what your instructions are asking people to do.

Adult literacy concerns using written information in real situations. For a training provider or consultant, the useful response is not to rank participants from the style of their answers. It is to make the invitation, instructions, and participation process usable, then check what still gets in the way.

This guide offers a practical method for doing that without talking down to adults or turning an experience survey into an unannounced skills test.

## Literacy means more than decoding words

The OECD's 2023 Survey of Adult Skills includes accessing, understanding, evaluating, and reflecting on written texts in its literacy framework. The purpose includes pursuing goals and participating in society. Recognizing words is therefore only part of the task. [OECD definition](https://www.oecd.org/fr/topics/sub-issues/adult-literacy-skills.html).

Another perspective, published by Santé publique France, includes the person, their environment, and their community. It asks whether the surrounding conditions provide resources that make understanding and communication possible. This puts responsibility on the organization producing the information as well as on the reader. [RUEL and MOREAU, 2017, in French](https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/docs/article/pour-mieux-definir-la-litteratie).

These are not interchangeable scoring systems. One frames a skills assessment; the other helps examine communication conditions. This article addresses those conditions, not individual assessment.

### Do not collapse different situations into one label

French public policy distinguishes *illettrisme*, concerning adults who attended school in French but face substantial difficulties with basic skills, from never having learned to read and write, and from learning French as an additional language. The distinction matters because the support required is different. These French categories should not be treated as universal English diagnostic labels. [ANLCI definitions, in French](https://www.anlci.gouv.fr/illettrisme/quest-ce-que-lillettrisme/).

A reader may also encounter an unfamiliar technical term without having a general difficulty with reading. Someone else may understand a question perfectly but not want to disclose a sensitive experience. Your form does not, on its own, distinguish these explanations.

Do not create a “low literacy” category from short answers, spelling, or requests for help. If your actual purpose is to assess skills, you need an assessment designed for that purpose, with its own methods and limitations. That is a different project from gathering people's experiences.

## Examine the task before interpreting the person

Consider these fictional instructions for a pre-training survey:

> Describe a significant professional situation involving your collaborative practices, specifying the levers mobilized and the barriers encountered.

The problem is not simply sentence length. A reader must decide what counts as significant, interpret the jargon, choose an incident, remember it, and organize several elements into one answer. They may also wonder whether their manager will read it.

Before shortening the wording, write down the purpose. Do you need a lived example to discuss during training? A description of support needs? A skills assessment? Without that decision, clearer wording can still deliver a confused request.

For the wider training purpose, the [training placement questionnaire guide](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/training-placement-questionnaire-how-to-keep-it-short-without-losing-quality) addresses a separate design step. Here, the focus is making a useful task understandable once its purpose is established.

## Rewrite without reducing every answer to a category

A working version might read:

> Think of a recent occasion when you worked with other people. Tell us what happened. Do not include the names of people or clients.

A separate follow-up can ask:

> In that situation, what helped you, or what was missing?

This wording is not universally validated. “Recent” can still mean different things, and “worked with” covers many situations. Adapt those terms to the purpose and test them. Do not assume that the revision works for everyone because it sounds simpler to you.

An open question preserves what the participant chooses to describe: workplace language, an unexpected obstacle, an exception. Predetermined categories can support comparison, but they do not replace that exploration. Richer material does not automatically make an answer unbiased or representative. The guide to [open-ended questions](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/open-ended-questions-get-actionable-data-without-bias) develops that distinction.

### Show the format, not the answer you hope to receive

A completed example such as “poor communication between departments” introduces content a participant may repeat. For exploratory work, a format cue is safer: “You can use a few sentences or a list.”

Only offer another channel, a later return, or personal assistance when you have actually arranged it. An unusable alternative adds another obstacle. Do not require a personal story merely because you want every cell in a report to be filled.

## A practical check of the participation process

The following is a proposed working procedure for a training team. It is not a literacy test or a certification standard.

**1. Recreate the intended situation.** Show the invitation and form on the device or medium people will use. Instructions that are easy to find on a large monitor may be lost after scrolling on a phone.

**2. Say what you are testing.** Explain: “We are checking our material, not your skills. You can tell us what gets in the way, skip a question, or stop.” Say which notes you will keep and who can see them. Do not promise anonymity when you know the participant's identity.

**3. Observe before immediately guiding.** Allow the person to find the instructions and begin. Record a visible action rather than an inferred trait: “returns to the invitation to check the recipient,” not “lacks independence.”

**4. Ask what the task means.** Ask what they think they are being asked to do, which situation they considered, and what they expect after submitting. “Is it clear?” alone does not reveal whether people interpret the request differently.

**5. Revise and try again.** Change the material in response to an observed problem. Try the revised version with other people close to the intended audience, including people whose conditions of use differ. Testing only with the authors or their immediate colleagues leaves important situations unexamined.

The CDC describes cognitive interviewing as a way to examine how people interpret a survey question and construct an answer. Its purpose is to identify problems rather than make population estimates. The process proposed here also looks at the invitation, navigation, and available assistance; it is not a substitute for a full cognitive interview study. [CDC/NCHS, 2024](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ccqder/question-evaluation/cognitive-interviewing.html).

## Turn observations into changes, not participant scores

This fictional log illustrates what a team can retain after a trial without assigning a literacy level.

| Observation | What it does not establish | Change to try |
|---|---|---|
| The person asks whether their manager will read the account. | Reading difficulty or unwillingness to participate. | Explain the actual audience and use before the question. |
| They search for an exceptional event. | A lack of professional experience. | Remove “significant” and clarify that an ordinary situation is suitable if that fits the purpose. |
| They start writing, then ask how much to write. | An inability to organize their thinking. | Add a non-evaluative format cue. |
| They cannot find the instructions after scrolling. | A lack of attention. | Place the instructions closer to the answer field. |
| They would prefer to speak. | A literacy diagnosis. | Discuss a genuinely available alternative and record the collection mode. |

Keep the exact version, trial date, observed problem, and remaining question. “We shortened the sentence” is not evidence that the problem is solved. “The task was understood as intended in the situations tested” is more precise, while remaining limited to those trials.

## Help with access without supplying the answer

Assistance can concern the process: finding a button, explaining who receives the answer, or reading the instructions again. It can also change the content: suggesting an obstacle, turning hesitation into an opinion, or summarizing on someone's behalf.

Keep these activities distinct. If someone transcribes a spoken answer, the participant should be able to check or correct it. Document the collection mode. A different channel or another person's involvement may matter when interpreting results; do not describe all answers as having been collected under identical conditions.

You do not need participants to disclose their educational history or a personal difficulty to improve your instructions. Offer assistance to everyone when feasible. If a participant themselves expresses a longer-term support need, discuss an appropriate route with them separately from the survey's scores or findings.

## What the answers actually support

An answer records what was expressed in a particular setting. It does not expose all the abilities of its author. In a methodological comparison of two surveys, Insee showed that assessment design affects which populations are identified as having difficulties. That 2013 study is not a description of today's population; its relevance here is the importance of the measurement instrument. [Insee comparison of IVQ and PIAAC, in French](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1521326).

Write “this term was interpreted in two ways during the trials,” not “the audience has a low level.” Write “some participants did not have an applicable situation to describe,” not “they learned nothing.”

[Survey fatigue](https://www.harmate.com/en/blog/survey-fatigue-recognizing-signals-reducing-cost-preserving-quality) is another distinct issue. Fatigue, access barriers, privacy concerns, and interpretation of a word can produce similar visible behavior. They should not be merged into a single label.

## Where a tool can help

A tool such as Harmate can support questionnaire preparation and the analysis of open responses. This does not turn a description of linguistic structure into a measure of comprehension, literacy, or a participant's worth. The [Open Questions page](https://www.harmate.com/en/product/open-questions) describes that next step after design.

The essential work remains concrete: what task did we set, under what conditions, what did we observe, and what did we change? Improving those conditions is more useful than ranking people through a questionnaire that was never designed to assess them.