The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 8.5 sweep (Focus@8) using the Comprehension measure from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Verbal comprehension | |
| Measures: | Verbal comprehension | |
| Verbal reasoning | ||
| Verbal expression | ||
| CHC: | Gc (Crystallised intelligence) | |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; child answers orally | |
| Procedure: | The child was asked a series of questions based on his or her understanding of general concepts, e.g. "Why do people brush their teeth?", "Why can birds fly, but cats can't?". Interviewers were allowed to repeat questions if the child did not understand. Responses were scored on a 0 - 2 metric. If the child spontaneously improved their answer, this was accepted. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | Responses were scored on a 0 - 2 metric. Raw scores were converted into scale scores using tables provided in the WISC manual (M = 10, SD = 3). | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | f8ws024 - f8ws054 | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Scaled score |
| N = 7,328 | N = 7,334 | |
| Range = 0 - 34 | Range = 1 - 19 | |
| Mean = 17.13 | Mean = 10.98 | |
| SD = 4.77 | SD = 3.71 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants: | Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89 - 127 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | ALSPAC – Age 4 – WPPSI-RUK Comprehension | |
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1991). WISC-III: Wechsler intelligence scale for children: Manual. Psychological Corporation. | |
| Technical resources: | Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc. | |
| Reference examples: | Horwood, J., Salvi, G., Thomas, K., Duffy, L., Gunnell, D., Hollis, C., ... & Zammit, S. (2008). IQ and non-clinical psychotic symptoms in 12-year-olds: results from the ALSPAC birth cohort. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 193(3), 185-191. | |
| Bornstein, M. H., Hahn, C. S., & Wolke, D. (2013). Systems and cascades in cognitive development and academic achievement. Child Development, 84(1), 154-162. | ||
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’.