Assessing students aged 25 and older
Exact was designed for use with students aged up to 18 years 11 months, and use with students older than this can create uncertainties when interpreting results. If the student is older than 18:11 then the program will use the norms for 18-year-olds when analysing results. However, international research studies have shown that, for the vast majority of the population within developed countries, literacy skills do not alter significantly in adulthood. Consequently, it is acceptable to use Exact with adults aged 19 and over if there are no satisfactory alternative tests available. Normative results for adults aged 19-54 should not be significantly different to those for adults aged 18:11; nevertheless, administrators should exercise caution when drawing conclusions about results of older adults, and this particularly applies to results of the typing to dictation test.
10 Satherley, P. & Lawes, E. (2008) The Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey: Age and Literacy. Ministry of Education, New Zealand.
Scottish Government (2009) Scottish Survey of Adult Literacies: Report of Findings, Part 4. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government.
Cascio, E., Clark, D. & Gordon, N. (2008) Education and the age profile of literacy into adulthood. (Working Paper 14073) Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.