NCDS – Age 50 – Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test

The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 50 sweep using the Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test.

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

Year of data collection:	2008
Domain:	Processing speed
Measures:	Attention/concentration
	Mental speed
	Visual scanning
Domain:	Gv (Visual Processing)
	Gs (Processing Speed)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS Age 50 Survey (2008) (opens in a new tab)
Administration method:	Trained interviewer; pen and paper.
Procedure:	Participants were given a page of random letters arranged in rows (N = 26) and columns (N = 30). They were asked to cross out as many target letters (“Ps” and “Ws”) as possible within a one-minute timeframe. Respondents were instructed to work across each row from left-to right as if they were reading a page and they were asked to perform the task as quickly and accurately as possible. Once the allotted time was over, they were asked to underline the last letter that reached their eye (any letter, target or otherwise). The total number of letters searched was summed to provide a measure of speed of processing, whereas the total number of target letters missed reflects level of accuracy.
Link to questionnaire:	https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/NCDS_8_FINAL_MAINSTAGE_DOCUMENTATION.pdf (opens in new tab)
Scoring:	Speed of processing: summed total of letters scanned (0 – 65)
	Accuracy: summed total of target letters missed (0 – 65)
Item-level variable(s):	None
Total score/derived variable(s):	N8CFLET -– N8CFRC Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS8 CAI Questionnaire (2008) Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Descriptives:	Processing speed (raw score)	Processing accuracy (raw score)
	N = 9,442	N = 9,442
	Range = 84 – 780	Range = 0 – 49
	Mean = 334.10	Mean = 4.42
	SD = 88.83	SD = 4.12
	(click image to enlarge)	(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants (months):	Mean = 608.27, SD = 1.92, Range = 598 – 614
Other sweep and/or cohort:	NCDS – Age 62 – Proposed repeat of tests at age 50
	BCS70 – Age 46-47 – Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test
	NSHD – Age 43 – Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test (3 trials)
	NSHD – Age 60-64 – Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test
	NSHD – Age 68-70 – Timed Letter Search/Letter Cancellation Test
Source:	The letter cancellation test was initially developed for the NSHD 1946 birth cohort study and has also been used in the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (MRC CFA Study, 1998). All cognitive measures at this sweep were taken from the 2002 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) (Taylor et al., 2007).
Technical resources:	Banks, J., Breeze, E., Lessof, C., & Nazroo, J. (2006). Retirement, health and relationships of the older population in England: The 2004 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (Wave 2).
	Brown, M., & Dodgeon, B. (2010). NCDS cognitive assessments at age 50: initial results. London: Centre for Longitudinal Studies.
Example articles:	Dregan, A., & Gulliford, M. C. (2013). Leisure-time physical activity over the life course and cognitive functioning in late mid-adult years: a cohort-based investigation. Psychological Medicine, 43(11), 2447-2458.
	Bowling, A., Pikhartova, J., & Dodgeon, B. (2016). Is mid-life social participation associated with cognitive function at age 50? Results from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS). BMC Psychology, 4(1), 58.

For the named variables in the table above, links are provided (where applicable) 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.