The MRC National Survey of Health of Development (NSHD) assessed their cohort members (CMs) during the study’s age 11 sweep using the General Ability Test (Verbal and Non Verbal).
Details on this measure and the data collected from the CMs are outlined in the table below.
| Domain: | Verbal (reasoning) | |
| Non-verbal (reasoning) | ||
| Measures: | General performance ability | |
| Verbal ability | ||
| Non-verbal ability | ||
| Induction | ||
| General sequential reasoning | ||
| CHC: | Gf (fluid intelligence) | |
| Gc (crystallised intelligence) | ||
| G (general ability) | ||
| Administration method: | Teacher/psychologist/trained individual; face to face; pen and paper | |
| Procedure: | This test consisted of 40 verbal and 40 non-verbal items. For the verbal items, the children were presented with a list of four words that were associated either logically, semantically, or phonologically, and were asked to select the correct word (out of 5 options) to complete the series. For the non-verbal section, they were required to choose the correct shape/symbol. The overall testing session at age 11 lasted under 2 hours. | |
| Link to questionnaire: | https://skylark.ucl.ac.uk/NSHD/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=questionnaires:1957_sm_nf3.pdf (opens in new tab) | |
| Scoring: | One point was awarded for each correct series (0 - 80) | |
| Item-level variable(s): | Not currently available | |
| Total score/derived variable(s): | GA11R, GA11R57, NV11R, NV11R57, V11R, V11R57, GA1157, GA11N, NV1157, NV11N, V1157, V11N | |
| Descriptives: | Raw score | Normalised score |
| N = 4,032 | N = 4,032 | |
| Range = 0 - 80 | Range = 46 - 158 | |
| Mean = 45.01 | Mean = 102.09 | |
| SD = 15.88 | SD = 15.30 | |
(click image to enlarge) | (click image to enlarge) |
|
| Age of participants (months): | Mean = 130.33, SD = 1.06, Range = 128 - 137 | |
| Other sweep and/or cohort: | NCDS – Age 11 – General Ability Test (Verbal and Non-verbal) | |
| Source: | Pigeon DA. Tests used in the 1954 and 1957 surveys. In: Douglas JWB, ed. The home and the school. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1964. (Appendix 1.) | |
| Technical resources: | None | |
| Reference examples: | Richards, M., Hardy, R., Kuh, D., & Wadsworth, M. E. (2001). Birth weight and cognitive function in the British 1946 birth cohort: longitudinal population based study. BMJ, 322(7280), 199-203. | |
| Kuh, D., Richards, M., Hardy, R., Butterworth, S., & Wadsworth, M. E. (2004). Childhood cognitive ability and deaths up until middle age: a post-war birth cohort study. International Journal of Epidemiology, 33(2), 408-413. | ||
Go to:
- Overview of all cognitive measures in NSHD
- 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’.