NSHD – Age 15 – The Alice Heim Group Ability Test (AH4)
The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 15 sweep using the Alice Heim Group Ability Test.
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
In this section
| Year of data collection: | 1961 | |
| Domain: | Verbal and non-verbal ability | |
| Measures: | General ability | |
| Verbal ability | ||
| Non-verbal ability | ||
| Induction | ||
| General sequential reasoning | ||
| Quantitative Reasoning | ||
| CHC: | Gf (fluid intelligence) | |
| Gc (crystallised intelligence) | ||
| G (general ability) | ||
| CLOSER Source: | Explore this sweep in CLOSER Discovery: NSHD 1961 (Age 15) (opens in a new tab) | |
| Administration method: | Teacher; face to face; pen and paper | |
| Procedure: | The AH4 contains 130 items, with 65 items each measuring verbal and non-verbal ability. The items include series completion, mental arithmetic, vocabulary, and reasoning by analogy. Participants were given 10 practice items before the non-verbal section, and 12 practice items before the verbal section. Raw and normalised scores (comparable to a standard IQ score) are available. The total time of administration was approximately 30 minutes. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=questionnaires:1961_sm_nf4.pdf (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | One point per correct answer; 0 – 65 (verbal/non-verbal); 0 – 135 (general) | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not currently available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | GA15R, GA15R61, NV15R, NV15R61, V15R, V15R61, GA1561, GA15N, NV1561, NV15N, V1561, V15N | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Normalised score |
| N = 4,019 | N = 4,017 | |
| Range = 0 – 125 | Range = 47 – 153 | |
| Mean = 73.96 | Mean = 101.88 | |
| SD = 20.19 | SD = 15.26 | |
(click image to enlarge) |
(click image to enlarge) |
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| Age of participants (months): | Mean = 174.54, SD = 2.12, Range = 172 – 182 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | None | |
| Source: | Heim, A. W. (1955). Manual for the Group test of General Intelligence AH4. London, England: National Foundation for Educational Research. | |
| Technical resources: | Pigeon DA. Details of the fifteen years tests. In: Douglas JWB, Ross JM, Simpson HR, eds. All Our Future. London: Davies, 1968; Appendix 1. | |
| Example articles: | Richards, M., Shipley, B., Fuhrer, R., & Wadsworth, M. E. (2004). Cognitive ability in childhood and cognitive decline in mid-life: longitudinal birth cohort study. BMJ, 328(7439), 552. | |
| Cooper, R., Richards, M., & Kuh, D. (2017). Childhood cognitive ability and age-related changes in physical capability from midlife: Findings from a British birth cohort study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 79(7), 785. | ||