Abstract:
The purpose of this research is to construct the Functional literacy Scales which can discriminate functional literacy of adult into 5 levels: illiteracy, partial literacy, medium literacy, literacy and best literacy. She researcher used the word ''Functional literacy" as defined by the UNESCO. The scales compose of 4 subtestes: reading ability, writing ability, mathematical ability and adjustment in society ability. Content validity was judged by 8 experts in Adult Education and the scales were tried out with known literacy adult students in 5 levels of metropolitan adult schools. The level of difficulty of this scale between 0.80 - 0.90, the power of discrimination was 0.20 - 0.92 and the reliability coefficient of the reading ability, writing ability, mathematical ability and adjustment test were 0.793, 0.881, 0.912 and 0.865, consequently. Then the tried out tests were -used with 525 samples of adult students from 5 levels of 17 metropolitan, adult schools in order to find the means of each tent in each level and the means.; of to tall literacy scores in each level. Data was analysed by one-way analysis, of variance and Newmann Keuls studentize Range Statistic. The findings were as follow : 1. The means of each .test in each level differed significantly ( p < 0.01 ) except that of reading ability test in level one and level two students which differed significantly at p < 0.05. The significance among means of each level allowed the researcher to assumed that the functional literacy scales can discriminate adults in to 5 functional literacy groups. 2. The range of student's literacy scores in each level were found as Follow :- Illiteracy : o 66.469 marks partial literacy : 66.470 74.246 marks medium literacy : 74.247 100.277 marks literacy : 100.278 112.715 marks best literacy : 112.716 152.000 marks.