Using Survival Analysis to Identify the Factors that Mitigate Attrition among Adult Learners with Low Literacy Skills in an ITS-based Literacy Program

Adult literacy in the U.S. remains a persistent challenge. Alarmingly, half of adults demonstrated literacy skills at or below basic proficiency levels. This deficiency significantly impacts the daily functioning, workplace success, health outcomes, and socioeconomic disparities. Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) serve as a promising solution for improving adult learners' literacy skills. In practice, however, we observed that learner attrition has taken a toll on the effectiveness of a literacy program we developed that includes an ITS. To identify the factors that may mitigate attrition among these learners, this study employed the survival analysis with 205 adult learners from both the U.S. and Canada who participated in our adult literacy program with an ITS. The results showed that the average number of lesson attempts by these learners, regardless of lesson completion, and their public assistance status may reduce the risk of dropping out of the program. Survival Analysis also indicated that Black learners faced elevated attrition risks. The findings have important implications for optimizing Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS)-based adult literacy programs: 1) Short-term persistence, operationalized through strategies such as lesson repetition and review, may enhance long-term retention; 2) future programs must adopt culturally responsive frameworks tailored to the specific needs of Black learners, who demonstrated elevated attrition risks, to address systemic disparities in engagement and retention; 3) program administrators should collaborate with social services to connect learners with public assistance resources, thereby mitigating socioeconomic barriers that compete with learning time.