NCDS – Age 7 – Southgate Group Reading Test

The 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 7 sweep using the Southgate Group Reading Test.

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

Year of data collection:	1965
Domain:	Verbal (reading)
Measures:	Reading ability (word recognition and comprehension)
	Particularly suited to identifying children with reading difficulties.
CHC:	Gc (Crystallised ability)
	Grw (Reading/writing)
CLOSER Source:	Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS Age 7 Survey (1965) (opens in a new tab)
Administrative method:	Teacher at school in a group; face to face; read aloud and by the child
Procedure:	On 16 (of 30) occasions, the child was given a picture of an object and had to ring the word, from 5 different options describing that object in the picture. On the other 14 occasions, the teacher read out a word and the child had to circle the correct one.
	Duration: The test lasted approximately 15-20 minutes (expected 60 -90 minutes for all 4 tests at age 7).
Link to questionnaire:	No direct link to pdf. Information can be found in the file ‘ncds1_1965_questionnaires_and_codebook.pdf’ which accompanies data download from UK Data Service website.
Scoring:	30 items. Each correct answer receives one mark. The total of possible marks for the test is 30.
Item-level variable(s):	Not currently available
Total score/derived variable(s):	N92 Explore these variables in CLOSER Discovery: NCDS1 Tests (1965) Dataset (opens in a new tab)
Age of participant (months):	Mean = 85.11, SD = 1.56, Range = 82 – 93
Descriptives:	Raw score
	N = 14,929
	Range = 0 – 30
	Mean = 23.34
	SD = 7.14
	(click image to enlarge)
Other sweep and/or cohort:	None
Source:	Southgate, V. (1962). Southgate Group Reading Tests: Manual of Instructions. University of London Press
Technical resources:	Shepherd, P. Measures of ability at ages 7 to 16. National Child Development Study User Guide, 2012.
	Pringle, M. K., Butler, N. & Davie, R. (1966). 11,000 Seven Year Olds. Longman, in association with National Children’s Bureau
Example articles:	Currie, J., & Thomas, D. (1999). Early test scores, socioeconomic status and future outcomes (No. w6943). National Bureau of Economic Research.
	Richards, M., Power, C., & Sacker, A. (2009). Paths to literacy and numeracy problems: evidence from two British birth cohorts. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 63(3), 239-244.