BCS70 – Age 10 – British Abilities Scales (BAS): Word Definition

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 10 sweep using the Word Definition 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:	Verbal knowledge (acquired and expressive)
Measures:	Verbal ability:
	Vocabulary knowledge
	Expressive language skills, including verbal fluency
	General knowledge
	Verbal conceptualisation
	Abstract thinking
	Retrieval of information from long-term memory
	Level of language stimulation
	(may depend on experience as well as education)
	Low scores may be generally attributable to:
	Poor verbal development
	Disadvantaged environmental circumstances
CHC:	Gc (Crystallised intelligence)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: BCS70 Age 10 Survey (1980) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	In schools; pen and paper
Procedure:	The teacher was presented with a list of 37 words. Each word was orally presented to the child who was asked what the word meant. E.g. “SPORT”; “What does SPORT mean?”. The words increased in difficulty as the test progressed.
	Items were scored as correct or incorrect according to whether or not the child expressed key concepts of the word’s meaning. The assessment was stopped after four successive incorrect or partially incorrect words.
	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:	37 items, the child received 1 point for each correct answer
Item-level variable(s):	i3504 – i3540
Total score/derived variable(s):	None
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 121.88, SD = 2.67, Range = 117 – 139
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 11,526
	Range = 0 – 32
	Mean = 10.13
	SD = 5.01
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	NSHD – Age 8 – Vocabulary (similar National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) task)
	NSHD – Age 11 – Vocabulary (similar National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) task)
	ALSPAC – Age 8.5 – WISC-III Vocabulary
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:	Bennett, K. E., & Haggard, M. P. (1999). Behaviour and cognitive outcomes from middle ear disease. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 80(1), 28-35.
	Connelly, R., & Gayle, V. (2019). An investigation of social class inequalities in general cognitive ability in two British birth cohorts. The British Journal of Sociology, 70(1), 90-108.