Skip to content
Closer - The home of longitudinal research

ALSPAC – Age 12.5 – Motor Skill And Movement Test

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 12.5 sweep (TeenFocus 1) using the Motor Skill And Movement Test.

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.


Year of data collection:2004
DomainMotor ability
Measures:Motor skill
Speed of limb movement
Limb power
Movement time
Dexterity
CHC:Gps (Psychomotor Speed)
CLOSER Source:Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Childhood (5 years to 12 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; oral answers; physical task
Procedure:Children undertook five separate physical tasks:
1. Turning Pegs (invert 12 pegs in a peg board)
2. Throwing at target (throws ball at target 3 meters away)
3. Walking backwards (child walks backwards along a 4.5 metre line on the floor)
4. One-hand catch (child bounces ball of wall 2m away and catches with one hand)
5. Two footed jump (child jumps forward as far as possible from a standing position)
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Scored on speed, accuracy and distance.
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):ff2640 – ff2893
Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Teen Focus 1/Teen Focus 1 FastTrack Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:Turning pegs first trial (preferred hand)Walking backwards (no. steps)
N = 1,956N = 2,081
Range = 6 - 66Range = 1 - 15
Mean = 22.03Mean = 10.92
SD = 4.41SD = 4.92
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):Mean (months) = 153.73, SD = 2.77, Range = 136 - 171
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Devised for study
Technical resources: Additional information is available on the ALSPAC website (opens in new tab)
Example articles:None

For the named items in the table above, links are provided to their corresponding content on CLOSER Discovery. Where a variable range is provided, full variable lists can be accessed through the ‘Variable Groups’ tab on the linked Discovery page.


Go to:


This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.