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ALSPAC – Age 18 months – GSMD Locomotor Scale

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) assessed their cohort members (CMs) at 18 months’ age (Children in Focus Clinic) using the Griffiths Scales of Mental Development (GSMD) Locomotor Scale.

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


Domain:Motor skills
Measures:Psychomotor abilities
Control precision
Static strength
CHC:Gp (Psychomotor Abilities)
Administration method:Trained interviewer; clinical setting; physical tasks
Procedure:The interviewer noted (yes/no) whether the child was capable of performing physical tasks ranging in difficulty from 'Can climb on to a low ledge or step' to 'Can bring a chair to the table, place it in position and seat her/himself without help'.
Link to questionnaire:http://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/clinical-measures/ (opens in new tab)
Scoring:Standardised DQ (0 - 100)
Item-level variable(s):Not readily available
Total score/derived variable(s):cf772, cf778
Descriptives:Unadjusted scoreAge adjusted score
N = 1,174N = 1,168
Range = 0 - 32.5Range = 64.38 - 135.45
Mean = 20.60Mean = 112.21
SD = 2.22SD = 10.06
(click image to enlarge)
(click image to enlarge)
Age of participants:Mean = 79.90 weeks, SD = 1.47, Range = 76 - 87
Other sweep and/or cohort:None
Source:Griffiths, R. (1970). The abilities of young children. London: Child Development Research Centre.
Technical resources:None
Reference examples:Little, R. E., Northstone, K., Golding, J., & ALSPAC Study Team. (2002). Alcohol, breastfeeding, and development at 18 months. Pediatrics, 109(5), e72-e72.
Hibbeln, J. R., Davis, J. M., Steer, C., Emmett, P., Rogers, I., Williams, C., & Golding, J. (2007). Maternal seafood consumption in pregnancy and neurodevelopmental outcomes in childhood (ALSPAC study): an observational cohort study. The Lancet, 369(9561), 578-585.

For the named items in the table above, links are provided (where applicable) to their corresponding content on CLOSER Discovery.


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This page is part of CLOSER’s ‘A guide to the cognitive measures in five British birth cohort studies’.