A scale devised for a survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD) and various national agencies, such as Statistics Canada and the U.S. Dept. of Education's National Center on Education Statistics.
In 1995 23,000 respondents ages 16–65 in seven countries were surveyed, and ranked from 1 to 5 on their comprehension of each of three types of literacy:
Results were reported as the percentage of the population scoring at each level on each of the three types of literacy. Sweden scored highest.
For example, the following percentages of the respondents in these countries scored at the highest level (5) on document literacy:
| Canada | 5.4% |
| Germany | 1.9% |
| Netherlands | 1.4% |
| Poland | 0.4% |
| Sweden | 7.7% |
| Switzerland (French speaking) | 1.9% |
| Switzerland (German speaking) | 1.9% |
| United States | 3.7% |
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Last revised: 8 November 2003.