ALSPAC – Age 9 – Neale Analysis Of Reading Ability (NARA II)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 9 sweep (Focus@9) using the Neale Analysis Of Reading Ability (NARA II) measure.

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

Years of data collection:	2001-2003
Domain:	Verbal (reading ability)
Measures:	Lexical Knowledge
	Communication Ability
	Verbal comprehension
	Verbal expression
	Reading speed
	Reading decoding
CHC:	Gc (Crystallized Intelligence
	Grw (Reading/Writing)
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; oral answers
Procedure:	The Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA II) was used to assess reading comprehension. The child was presented with a booklet containing short passages of text (accompanied with illustrations). They were asked to read each passage and then asked a series of questions about the story they had just read. The test involved three stories of increasing difficulty (level 1-3). A practice trial was administered first, and if the child made more than 17 errors on the practice passage, they were not asked the comprehension questions and the tester moved straight on to the level one story. All other children moved on to the level two story unless the tester felt that they had particular difficulty with reading the practice passage. If the child made less than three errors on the level two story the tester proceeded to level three. If, however, the child made 3 or more errors on level two, the comprehension questions were administered but the tester moved down to the level one story. For the remaining test passages the child was not asked the comprehension questions if they made more than 16 errors (20 on level six) and the session was ended. The comprehension questions were asked as soon as the child had finished reading. For each question, the child was given 10 to 12 seconds to respond.
Link to questionnaire:	http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	The time taken, number of passages read, number of errors and comprehension scores were recorded. Standardised scores were calculated based on 1546 children (750 boys and 796 girls) in school years 1 to 7 in the UK (Neale, 1997).
Item-level variable(s):	f9sn700 – f9sn707a
Total score/derived variable(s):	f9sn800, f9sn801, f9sn802 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: ALSPAC Focus at 9 Clinic Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Words per minute (raw)	Accuracy (raw)	Comprehension (raw)
	N = 6,918	N = 6,937	N = 6,937
	Range = 14 – 394	Range = 0 – 100	Range = 0 – 44
	Mean = 80.69	Mean = 66.03	Mean = 24.95
	SD = 27.71	SD = 20.56	SD = 7.84
	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)
	Words per minute (standardised)	Accuracy (standardised)	Comprehension (standardised)
	N = 6,918	N = 6,937	N = 6,937
	Range = 69 – 131	Range = 69 – 131	Range = 69 – 131
	Mean = 105.10	Mean = 103.64	Mean = 99.86
	SD = 12.55	SD = 13.68	SD = 11.90
	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 118.49 months, SD = 3.89, Range = 105 – 140
Other sweep and/or cohort:	None
Source:	Neale, M.D. (1997). Neale Analysis of Reading Ability-Revised: Manual for schools. Windsor, UK: NFER-Nelson.
Technical resources:	None
Example articles:	Paracchini D Phil, S., Steer, C. D., Buckingham, L. L., Morris, A. P., Ring, S., Scerri D Phil, T., … & Monaco, A. P. (2008). Association of the KIAA0319 dyslexia susceptibility gene with reading skills in the general population. American Journal of Psychiatry, 165(12), 1576-1584.
	Bath, S. C., Steer, C. D., Golding, J., Emmett, P., & Rayman, M. P. (2013). Effect of inadequate iodine status in UK pregnant women on cognitive outcomes in their children: results from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). The Lancet, 382(9889), 331-337.

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.