The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 8.5 sweep (Focus@8) using the Vocabulary measure from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Domain | Verbal ability | |
| Measures: | Verbal comprehension | |
| Lexical knowledge | ||
| Long-term memory | ||
| Language development | ||
| CHC: | Gc (Crystallised intelligence) | |
| Administration method: | Trained interviewer; clinical setting; oral answers | |
| Procedure: | The interviewer read aloud a list of words, asking the child to define each one in turn. Responses were scored on a 0 - 2 scale depending on the quality of response. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | Responses were scored on a 0 - 2 scale depending on the quality of response. Raw scores were converted into scale scores using tables provided in the WISC manual (M = 10, SD = 3). | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not readily available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | f8ws023 - f8ws053 | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Scaled score |
| N = 7,371 | N = 7,376 | |
| Range = 0 - 48 | Range = 1 - 19 | |
| Mean = 23.30 | Mean = 10.94 | |
| SD = 7.87 | SD = 4.39 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants: | Mean = 103.82 months, SD = 3.92, Range = 89 - 127 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | NSHD – Age 8 – Vocabulary (similar test) | |
| NSHD – Age 11 – Vocabulary (similar test) | ||
| BCS70 – Age 10 – BAS Word Definition (similar BAS task) | ||
| Source: | Wechsler, D. (1991). WISC-III: Wechsler intelligence scale for children: Manual. Psychological Corporation. | |
| Technical resources: | Kaufman, A. S., & Lichtenberger, E. O. (2000). Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R assessment. John Wiley & Sons Inc. | |
| Reference examples: | Horwood, J., Salvi, G., Thomas, K., Duffy, L., Gunnell, D., Hollis, C., ... & Zammit, S. (2008). IQ and non-clinical psychotic symptoms in 12-year-olds: results from the ALSPAC birth cohort. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 193(3), 185-191. | |
| Northstone, K., Joinson, C., Emmett, P., Ness, A., & Paus, T. (2012). Are dietary patterns in childhood associated with IQ at 8 years of age? A population-based cohort study. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 66(7), 624-628. | ||
For the named items in the table above, links are provided 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.
Go to:
- Overview of all cognitive measures in ALSPAC
- Overview of childhood cognitive measures across all studies
This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.