About the International Survey of Adult Skills
The study aims to find out about the activities that adults do in their daily lives and to learn about their experiences of education and work. It will be just as valuable to speak to people who completed their education a long time ago as it is to speak to people who recently completed their education. Similarly, we are equally interested in speaking to people who are currently working and people who are not. This information will help provide a clear picture of the challenges we face as a country and help us to support people to improve their skills to deal with the challenges of the future in life and work.
The information you provide will be combined with information from all the other participants to give an overall picture of skills in England across a wide range of people.
This important study is being carried out for the Department for Education by Kantar Public and NatCen, working with the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).
The main websites for each of these organisations can be accessed using the links below:
How do you decide who takes part?
As it is not possible to ask everyone in England to take part in the survey, a sample of addresses is selected to represent the entire country. Your address is one of these and was selected at random from a list of private household addresses held by the Royal Mail. We are only able to use these selected addresses, so we really do hope that you will take part if you are eligible - we are not able to replace you with anybody else.
We will check whether anybody in the household is eligible to participate - if so, one person will be selected to participate when our interviewer visits your address. The person will be selected at random, as this is the only way that we can be sure that we end up speaking to a truly representative group of people across England. We will always ask permission from a parent or guardian before interviewing anyone under the age of 18.
What will the survey ask me about?
The survey covers a wide range of topics, including:
- your experiences of education and work
- how you use skills in everyday life
- your thoughts on society
- some information about your background including ethnicity
- your perception of your health
The survey also involves some exercises for you to do. These are similar to what you may do in everyday life and might include things like following instructions on a prescription label, reading a flight schedule at the airport, using a map to obtain directions, or determining the expiration date on a food product.
Why take part in the study?
It is important for the Government to have up to date information about the kinds of skills people use in everyday life.
This survey will provide the Department for Education with the information it needs to assess how its policies are working and what changes may help to improve them in the future. The survey is being conducted in over 30 countries across the world which means the Government will be able to compare England with these other countries.
It is important that the survey represents everyone in the country, so we need to talk to people from all different types of background.
What do I need to do?
You do not need to do anything now. An interviewer will visit your address to ask you to take part in the survey and arrange a convenient time for the survey to take place.
