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 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 and non-verbal ability |
| Measures: | Verbal Ability |
| Non-verbal/performance ability | |
| CHC: | G (general ability) |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; oral answers; pen and paper |
| Procedure: | The WASI is a measure of general cognitive ability designed for use in adults and older adolescents. It is a short-form measure that was developed in tangent with, and designed to provide an estimate of, the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. It is comprised of four subscales, two verbal and two performance (non-verbal. The two verbal subtests are: i) vocabulary, and ii) similarities. The performance subtests are: i) block design, and ii) matrix reasoning. Each subtest is described individually in the sections below. The WASI provides standard scores (M= 100, SD = 15), on verbal IQ, performance IQ and fullscale IQ. Raw scores are converted into age-adjusted standardized scores using tables provided in the WASI manual. Note that only the vocabulary and matrix reasoning tests were administered at this clinic, and these were used to approximate full IQ score. |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (Opens in new tab) |
| Scoring: | Standardised score (M = 100, SD = 15) |
| Item-level variable(s): | fh6272 - fh6276 |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | fh6277 - fh6280 |
| Descriptives: | Fullscale IQ |
| N = 4,955 | |
| Range = 55 - 137 | |
| Mean = 91.96 | |
| SD = 13.00 | |
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| Age of participants: | Mean = 185.69 months, SD = 4.24, Range = 171 - 212 |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | None |
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1999). Manual for the Wechsler abbreviated intelligence scale (WASI). San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation. |
| Technical resources: | None |
| Reference examples: | Smithers, L. G., Golley, R. K., Mittinty, M. N., Brazionis, L., Northstone, K., Emmett, P., & Lynch, J. W. (2013). Do dietary trajectories between infancy and toddlerhood influence IQ in childhood and adolescence? Results from a prospective birth cohort study. PLoS One, 8(3), e58904. |
| 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’.