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Cross-study data guides
A guide to the cognitive measures in five CLOSER studies
Explore cognition measurements across the CLOSER partner studies
1970 British Cohort Study
BCS70 Age 5 (1975)
BCS70 Age 5 Copying Designs Test

BCS70 – Age 5 – Copying Designs Test

The 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 5 sweep using the Copying Designs Test.

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

Year of data collection:	1975
Domain:	Visual spatial
Measures:	Visual motor co-ordination. Ability to reproduce shapes.
CHC:	Gv (Visual processing)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: BCS70 Age 5 Survey (1975) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	Health visitor at home; drawing
Procedure:	The child was given a booklet, and asked to copy 8 drawings, one at a time twice on two consecutive pages of booklet.
Link to questionnaire:	https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BCS70_age5_test_booklet.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	Score 0 -8. Each drawing was scored 0 or 1. As not all children completed two copies a score of 1 was given if at least one copy was good. Total score was the sum of the score for the individual drawings. Zero was awarded when a child attempted to copy at least one design but all attempts were judged to be poor copies.
Item-level variable(s):	f004 – f019
Total score/derived variable(s):	f119 (Copying Designs Score; raw total)
	f122 (Copying Designs Score; standardised)*
	*variable may have been updated, please check carefully
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 61.78, SD = 1.33, Range = 60 – 77
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 13,028
	Range = 0 – 8
	Mean = 4.73
	SD = 1.98
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	BCS70 – Child of CM (Multi-Age) – Copying Designs Test (no data available)
	NCDS – Age 7 – Copying Designs Test (6 designs)
	NCDS – Age 11 – Copying Designs Test (6 designs)
Source:	Used in previous studies (Davie, et al., 1972; Rutter et al., 1970)
	Rutter, M., Tizard, J., & Whitmore, K. (1970). Education, Health and Behaviour. London: Longman.
	Davie, R., Butler, N.R., & Goldstein, H. (1972). From Birth to Seven. A report of the National Child Development Study. London: Longman.
Technical resources:	Parsons, S. (2014). Childhood cognition in the 1970 British Cohort Study, CLS Working Paper. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
Technical resources:	Golding, J. (1975). The 1970 Birth Cohort 5-Year Follow-up: Guide to the Dataset. Bristol: University of Bristol Institute of Child Health.
Example articles:	Blanden, J., Gregg, P., & Macmillan, L. (2006). Accounting for intergenerational income persistence: non-cognitive skills, ability and education. CEEDP (73). Centre for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
Example articles:	White, J., & Batty, G.D. (2012). Intelligence across childhood in relation to illegal drug use in adulthood: 1970 British Cohort Study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 66(9), 767-774.