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 Information 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 ability | |
| Measures: | General verbal information | |
| Verbal comprehension | ||
| Listening ability | ||
| Auditory/visual perception | ||
| Oral production and fluency | ||
| CHC: | Gc (Crystallised intelligence) | |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; child points to answer | |
| Procedure: | This test consisted of oral, 'general knowledge' questions. One point was awarded for each correct answer. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | 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): | f8ws020 - f8ws050 | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Scaled score |
| N = 7,389 | N = 7,409 | |
| Range = 0 - 30 | Range = 1 - 19 | |
| Mean = 11.88 | Mean = 11.08 | |
| SD = 3.13 | SD = 3.12 | |
(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 Information | |
| 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. | |
| Northstone, K., Joinson, C., Emmett, P., Ness, A., & Paus, T. (2012). Are dietary patterns in childhood associated with IQ at 8 years of age? A population-based cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 66(7), 624-628. | ||
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’.