Highlights from National Follow-up Study

For the past two years, I have had the pleasure of working with Ellen Long, Director of Research for ABC CANADA, on an important national research study about participation in literacy education in Canada. This follow-up study of people seeking literacy services in Canada builds on research conducted by Literacy BC and documented in the 1999 report, It Guided Me Back to Learning: A Longitudinal Research Study on Calls to the Literacy BC Helpline. Following are some highlights from the national study.

In spite of increased outreach efforts, recruitment and retention of learners remain two of the most significant challenges facing the literacy field. Only a fraction of eligible adults have ever enrolled in a literacy program and among those who have, attrition rates are high. Patterns of participation in literacy education are complex and, until now, we have had little Canadian research to guide our understanding.

In early 1999, 55 literacy groups across Canada did the groundwork for a national follow-up study by collecting names and phone numbers of people who were seeking information or services. Six to eight months later, we conducted phone interviews with 338 people who had given their earlier permission to be contacted. This large-scale systematic study provides an unprecedented opportunity to look at the conditions which promote or deter successful participation in literacy education in Canada.

The full report of this study will be available this fall, and will include an extensive discussion of the highly complex multiple factors affecting participation. For now, we offer a few highlights of the study's central findings. After placing the initial call to a literacy group, 47% of callers went on to sign up for a program and 53% did not (Figure 1). Figure 2 illustrates the main reasons people did not sign up for a program. Like the recently released Literacy BC study, we found that program-related reasons were the main factor deterring enrolment for the largest percentage of callers (43%). Program-related factors include not being called back by the program, long waiting lists, inconvenient class times and locations, wrong type of program content or structure, and having to pay for the program or tutor.

Following program-related reasons, socioeconomic-circumstantial reasons were the next largest main factor reported by those who did not enroll (31%). Within this group, more than half were dealing with work-related conflicts and a third were dealing with care of children and other family and social responsibilities. The availability of different class times and assistance with childcare could significantly reduce the impact of socioeconomic-circumstantial deterrents to enrolment.

Cognitive-emotive reasons were the least likely (15%) to be cited as the main reason for not enrolling, which stands in sharp contrast to a common belief that fear and stigma are the main problems deterring potential learners. However, we might reasonably expect that cognitive-emotive factors may play a higher part for people who have not called in the first place.

Portion of people who signed up in a literacy program

...and their reasons why they didn't.

Disturbingly, 8% of the people who signed up were still on waiting lists at the point of follow-up, which was six to eight months after the initial call. Of those who did not sign up, 35% reported a long waiting period as one of the reasons for not signing up. Seventy-five percent of those who did not enroll said they would call again in the future. Our findings clearly suggest that much needs to happen to ensure that the outcomes are different when they do call again.

For a copy of this study when it is published this fall, contact Literacy BC.