BCS70 – Age 10 – British Abilities Scales (BAS): Matrices

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 10 sweep using the Matrices measure from the British Ability Scales (BAS).

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

Year of data collection:	1980
Domain:	Inductive, non-verbal reasoning
Measures:	Non-verbal reasoning:
	Non-verbal inductive reasoning, including identification of the rules governing variables in abstract figures, and formulation and testing of hypotheses about these rules
	Use of verbal mediation strategies involving labelling of figures
	Visuo-spatial analysis, including perception of shape, relative size and orientation
	Low score:
	Poor understanding of verbal instructions or visual cues
CHC:	Gf (Fluid intelligence)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: BCS70 Age 10 Survey (1980) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	In school, pen and paper
Procedure:	The task consisted of 28 incomplete patterns arrayed as a grid (a matrix). Each matrix was a square consisting of four or nine cells, with a blank cell in the lower right corner. The teacher asked the child to complete each item by drawing the appropriate shape in the empty square. There were seven example items, three at the start of the exercise, then four examples when the level of difficulty increased. The task was stopped when four successive items were drawn incorrectly or when it was apparent that the level of difficulty was too great. For more details, see “Technical Resources” below.
	Duration: Total 30 minutes for 4 BAS tests
Link to questionnaire:	https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/British-ability-scales-annotated.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	28 items, 1 point for each correct drawing
Item-level variable(s):	i3617 – i3644
Total score/derived variable(s):	None
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 121.88, SD = 2.67, Range = 117 – 139
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 11,494
	Range = 0 – 28
	Mean = 15.35
	SD = 5.40
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	BCS70 – Age 16 – BAS Matrices (but fewer items at age 16 (11 v 28) and different format (multi-choice v drawing))
	ALSPAC – Age 15.5 – WASI Matrix Reasoning (similar)
Source:	Elliott, C. D., Murray, D. J. & Pearson, L. S. (1979). British Ability Scales. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.
	Elliott, C., Murray, D., & Pearson, L. (1978). British Ability Scales. Windsor: National Foundation for Educational Research.
Technical resources:	Parsons, S. (2014). Childhood cognition in the 1970 British Cohort Study, CLS Working Paper. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies. (Link opens in a new tab).
Example articles:	Deary, I. J., Batty, G. D., & Gale, C. R. (2008). Bright children become enlightened adults. Psychological Science, 19(1), 1-6.
	Bourne, M., Bukodi, E., Betthäuser, B., & Goldthorpe, J. H. (2018). ‘Persistence of the social’: The role of cognitive ability in mediating the effects of social origins on educational attainment in Britain. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 58, 11-21.