ALSPAC – Age 11.5 – Higher Conceptual Reasoning (Bike Drawing Task)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 11 sweep (Focus 11+ Clinic) using a measure of Higher Conceptual Reasoning (Bike Drawing Task).

Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.

Years of data collection:	2003-2005
Domain:	General ability (perceptual)
Measures:	Higher conceptual reasoning
	Mechanical reasoning
	Visuographing functioning
CHC:	G (General ability)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Childhood (5 years to 12 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:	Trained interviewer; clinical setting; pen and paper
Procedure:	The child was asked to draw a bicycle within a box on a piece of A4 paper. They were given a maximum of 3 minutes to complete the task, and were prompted with 30 seconds remaining. They were scored on whether any of 12 basic items necessary for a bike to function were present in the drawing (e.g. wheels, handlebars). A further 10 more detailed items were also scored (e.g. basket, bell), as were 3 possible background aspects of the picture (road, landscape, sky).
Link to questionnaire:	http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	In the early stages, each criterion was scored present/absent. However, additional coding was required to note whether an item was functional (e.g. pedals attached to frame), and scoring was later amended to Yes, functional; Yes, not functional and No. There is a summary variable that indicates which coding scheme was used. According to the latest ALSPAC documentation, early data is currently being recoded to the new format.
Item-level variable(s):	febd001 – febd101
Total score/derived variable(s):	febd020a – febd071 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus 11+ Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 4,296
	Range = 0 – 16
	Mean = 6.08
	SD = 2.70
	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean (months) = 140.97, SD = 2.86, Range = 125 – 163
Other sweep and/or cohort:	None
Source:	Designed for study by Professor Dieter Wolke. Based on similar tasks that have been used for decades, e.g. Piaget, J. (1930).
Technical resources:	None
Example articles:	Unknown

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.