The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 15.5 sweep (TeenFocus 3) using the Vocabulary measure from the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale Of Intelligence (WASI).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Verbal ability | |
| Measures: | Verbal comprehension | |
| Lexical knowledge | ||
| Long-term memory | ||
| Language development | ||
| CHC: | Crystallised intelligence (Gc) | |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; oral answers | |
| Procedure: | The test consists of 42 items. For items 7-10, the interviewer showed the child a picture and asked them to describe what they saw (e.g. a fish). For all other items, the interviewer read aloud a list of words, asking the child to define each one as they proceed, e.g. ("Tell me what TRANSFORM means"). | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | Items 7-10 were worth 1 point each. All other items are scored on a 0 - 2 scale depending on the quality of response. Note (see documentation): WASI scores may underestimate IQ. Raw scores were converted to T-scores using the WASI manual (0 - 60). | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | fh6272, fh6277 | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | T-score |
| N = 5,281 | N = 5,281 | |
| Range = 4 - 71 | Range = 20 - 77 | |
| Mean = 45.42 | Mean = 45.56 | |
| SD = 10.02 | SD = 11.82 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants: | Mean = 185.69 months, SD = 4.24, Range = 171 - 212 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | ALSPAC – Age 4 – WPPSI-RUK Vocabulary | |
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1999). Manual for the Wechsler abbreviated intelligence scale (WASI). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation. | |
| Technical resources: | None | |
| Reference examples: | Mokrysz, C., Landy, R., Gage, S. H., Munafò, M. R., Roiser, J. P., & Curran, H. V. (2016). Are IQ and educational outcomes in teenagers related to their cannabis use? A prospective cohort study. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 30(2), 159-168. | |
| Ramsay, H., Barnett, J. H., Murray, G. K., Miettunen, J., Mäki, P., Järvelin, M. R., ... & Veijola, J. (2018). Cognition, psychosis risk and metabolic measures in two adolescent birth cohorts. Psychological medicine, 48(15), 2609-2623. | ||
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:
- Overview of all cognitive measures in ALSPAC
- Overview of childhood cognitive measures across all studies
This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.