Medição do analfabetismo funcional em alunos ingressantes no curso superior de administração de empresas: um estudo exploratório

Abstract

If the comprehension and the capacity of understading texts in a satisfactory way are fundamental to functionality within society - specially, if this understanding is supported by written texts- this work objects the generation and application of an exploratory instrument for measuring the functional illiteracy in University fresher students from Business Administration courses. For carrying out this work two separate instruments wereused for collecting data: a0 the first was a questionnaire compiled by 32 questions concerning three different skills by the interviewee - the comprehension of prose texts, the comprehension of graphic texts with numeriacl information and another; b0 the second instrument was a 20 question questionnaire, wich was organized with the objective of accessing the participants' profile (It allowed the description of the participants' personal characteristics, their education and their social-economic attributes). The questions presented in the first instrument referred to the requirements demanded by the work market on professionals working on related administration areas, on the students' life routine, and on their basic skills for enrolling an administration course. Therefore, this work seeks to verify possible tendencies on group variables related to the sample. The results have shown the presence of functional illiteracy among students. Obviously this small number disallows the generalization of the results to other institutions. It is however acceptable, that this study be used as a reference to further studies concerning the problem of functional illiteracy in the University enviroment.