The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed study mothers during the study’s third ‘Focus on Mothers’ clinic using a Digits Backwards measure.
The study of ALSPAC study mothers began in 2008 with the aim of determining what factors are related to body size, bone density, blood pressure, glucose, insulin and abnormal blood lipids in women. This ‘Focus on Mothers’ (FOM) study consisted of four clinics held during the following periods: i) 2008 – 2011, ii) 2011 – 2013, iii) 2013 – 2014, and iv) 2014 – 2015. Each clinic lasted approximately 2.5 hours. For further details see Fraser et al. (2012). Along with various physical measures, measures of cognitive ability/functioning were collected at clinics FOM2, FOM3, and FOM4.
Details on the Digits Backwards measure administered as part of FOM3 are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Verbal memory |
| Measures: | Working memory |
| CHC: | Gsm (short-term memory) |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; face to face; clinical setting |
| Procedure: | The interviewer read aloud a series of numbers and asked the participant to immediately repeat them backwards. For example: |
| Interviewer: "1 - 5 - 9" | |
| Participant: "9 - 5 - 1" | |
| The task was discontinued if the participant did not correctly recall any of the digits. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) |
| Scoring: | Each item was scored 0, 1 or 2 points as follows: |
| 2 points = if the participant passed both trials | |
| 1 points = if the participant passed only 1 trial | |
| 0 points = if the participant failed both trials | |
| Maximum score = 14 points. | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | fm3cg011 |
| Descriptives: | Raw score |
| N = 2,987 | |
| Range = 1 - 14 | |
| Mean = 7.20 | |
| SD = 2.28 | |
(click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants (years): | Mean = 52.00, SD = 4.45, Range = 38 - 67 |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 2 – Digits Backwards |
| ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 4 – Digits Backwards | |
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1998). WAIS-III UK administration and scoring manual. London, UK: The Psychological Corporation. |
| Technical resources: | None |
| Reference examples: | Anderson, E. L., Heron, J., Ben-Shlomo, Y., Kuh, D., Cooper, R., Lawlor, D. A., ... & Howe, L. D. (2017). Adversity in childhood and measures of aging in midlife: Findings from a cohort of British women. Psychology and Aging, 32(6), 521-530. |
For the named items in the table above, links are provided to their corresponding content on CLOSER Discovery.
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’.