ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 4 – Digits Backwards

A 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” study consisted of four clinics held during the following periods:

1. 2008 – 2011 (FOM1)
2. 2011 – 2013 (FOM2)
3. 2013 – 2014 (FOM3)
4. 2014 – 2015 (FOM4)

Each clinic lasted approximately 2.5 hours. For further details see (Fraser et al., 2013).

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 FOM4 are outlined in the table below.

Years of data collection:	2014-2015
Domain:	Verbal memory
Measures:	Working memory
CHC:	Gsm (short-term memory)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Early Adulthood (19 years – 30 years 11 months) (opens in a new tab)
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):	fm4cg011 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus on Mothers 4 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 2,846
	Range = 2-14
	Mean = 7.40
	SD = 2.34
	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (years):	Mean = 53.13 years, SD = 4.43, Range = 40 – 67
Other sweep and/or cohort:	ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 2 – Digits Backwards
	ALSPAC – Focus on Mothers 3 – Digits Backwards
Source:	Wechsler, D. (1998).WAIS-III UK administration and scoring manual. London, UK: The Psychological Corporation.
Technical resources:	None
Example articles:	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.