The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) assessed the children of cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 34 sweep using the Copying Designs Test.
When the CM was aged 34, child assessments were conducted with the cohort member’s children. Each of the CM’s eligible children were asked to complete three exercises designed to measure a range of verbal and numerical abilities. Although dependent on the child’s age and abilities, each set of exercises was expected to take an average of 20 minutes to complete.
The Copying Designs Test measure was administered as part of a set of ‘Early Years’ exercises (for children aged between 3 and 5 years and 11 months). Details on this measure and the data collected are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Visual spatial |
| Measures: | Ability to reproduce shapes |
| CHC: | Gv (Visual processing) |
| Administrative method: | Child shown picture on CAPI, draws design in booklet |
| Procedure: | The child was shown a series of line drawings and asked to copy them as accurately as possible. (This exercise was not part of the BAS II, but had been completed by the cohort members themselves when they were age 5). |
| Link to questionnaire: | https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BCS70-2004-Guide-to-Child-Assessments.pdf (opens in new tab) |
| Scoring: | Copy 8 drawings twice on two consecutive pages of booklet. Each drawing is scored 0 or 1. As not all children completed two copies a score of 1 was given if at least one copy is good. Total score is the sum of the score for the individual drawings. |
| Item-level variable(s): | No data available (tests not coded) |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | None |
| Age of participants (months): | No data available |
| Descriptives: | None |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | BCS70 – Age 5 – Copying Designs Test |
| NCDS – Age 7 – Copying Designs Test (6 designs) | |
| NCDS – Age 11 – Copying Designs Test (6 designs) |
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| Source: | Osborn, A. F., Butler, N. R., & Morris, A. C. (1984). The Social Life of Britain's Five Year Olds: A report of the Child Health and Education Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. |
| Technical resources: | Parsons, S., Bynner, J. & Foudouli, V. (2005). Measuring basic skills for longitudinal study: the design and development of instruments for use with cohort members in the age 34 follow-up in the 1970 British Cohort Study. London: NRDC. |
| Parsons, S. (2006). British Cohort Study 2004 Follow up: Guide to Child Assessment Data, CLS Working Paper. | |
| Reference examples: | None |
Go to:
- Overview of all cognitive measure in BCS70
- 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’.