This article focuses on the notion of literacy--general and statistical--in the analysis of data from a fieldwork research project carried out as part of a master's degree that investigated the teaching and learning of statistics in adult education mathematics classes. We describe the statistical context of the project that involved the development of a questionnaire, the organization of the resulting information into tables, and the preparation of posters summarizing the results. The project was carried out with 7th-grade students, ages from 16 to 43, in a public state elementary school as part of the Youth and Adult Education program (Educação de Jovens e Adultos-EJA), located on the outskirts of Campinas, State of São Paulo, Brazil.