Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T12:09:21.563Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Design and Sampling Considerations, Response Rates, and Representativeness in a Finnish Twin Family Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

J. Kaprio ,
R.J. Rose ,
S. Sarna ,
H. Langinvainio ,
M. Koskenvuo ,
H. Rita  and
K. Heikkilä
J. Kaprio*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
R.J. Rose
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
S. Sarna
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
H. Langinvainio
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
M. Koskenvuo
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
H. Rita
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
K. Heikkilä
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA
*
Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Kalliolinnantie 4, SF - 00140 Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Kinships composed of twin parents, their spouses and children, offer a robust and flexible sampling design for research in genetic epidemiology. Families-of-twins designs circumvent some of the sampling problems that arise when independent data sets are combined, and these designs provide unique evaluations of maternal influences, assortative mating and X-linkage. Unfortunately, empirical studies of families of twin parents have been limited by relatively small samples and by the self-selection biases intrinsic in ascertainment of families from volunteer twin registries.

A large and representative cohort of monozygotic and dizygotic twin parents, drawn from a population-based twin registry, provides the optimal sampling frame for twin-family research. This paper reviews the sampling considerations underlying the initial family study based on the Finnish Twin Cohort and evaluates the representativeness of the sampled twins. Spouses and adult children (over 18 years) of 236 pairs of twins, about equally divided by gender and zygosity, were evaluated by a postal questionnaire. Individual response rates exceeded 86% and in 464 of the 472 nuclear families (98.3% ), at last one member of the twin's family completed the questionnaire. The sampled twins, selected for fecundity to maximize statistical power of the obtained data, were broadly representative of non-selected twins drawn from the Cohort, with whom they were matched on age, gender, and zygosity. Such results suggest that the Finnish Cohort has excellent potential for extended twin-family research designs.

Keywords

TwinsRegistriesSamplingQuestionnaireSubstance exposurePersonality
Type
Research Article
Information
Acta geneticae medicae et gemellologiae: twin research , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 79 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1987

References

REFERENCES

1.Bader, PJ, Bingle, GJ, Yu, PL, Clark, CM, Nance, WE (1973): The inheritance of glucose tolerance as a quantitative variable. Am J Hum Genet 25: 13a.Google Scholar
2.Bingle, GJ (1974): The inheritance of electrocardiographic variables in man: a comparison of twin and half-sib models. Ph. D. thesis, Indiana University.Google Scholar
3.Cavalli-Sforza, LL, Feldman, MW (1981): Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
4.Christian, JC, Kang, KW (1977): Maternal influence on plasma cholesterol variation. Am J Hum Genet 20: 462–467.Google Scholar
5.Crumpacker, DW, Cederlöf, R, Friberg, Let al (1979): A twin study methodology for the study of genetic and environmental control of variation in human smoking behavior. Acta Genet Med Gemellol 28: 173–195.Google Scholar
6.Donner, A (1979): The use of correlation and regression in the analysis of family resemblance. Am J Epidemiol 110: 335–342.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
7.Eriksson, AW, Eskola, M, Fellman, J, Forsius, H (1973): The value of genealogical data in population studies in Sweden and Finland. In Morton, NE (ed): Genetic Structure of Populations. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, pp 102–118.Google ScholarPubMed
8.Haley, CS, Jinks, JL, Last, K (1981): The monozygotic twin half-sib method for analysing maternal effects and sex-linkage in humans. Heredity 46: 227–238.Google Scholar
9.Haley, CS, Last, K (1981): The advantages of analysing human variation using twins and twin half-sibs and cousins. Heredity 47: 221–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
10.Heath, AC, Kendler, KS, Eaves, LJ, Markell, D (1985): The resolution of cultural and biological inheritance: informativeness of different relationships. Behav Genet 15: 439–465.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
11.Heath, AC, Martin, NG, Eaves, LJ (1984): Sense and nonsense in genetic epidemiology: A critique of the statistical model of Williams and Iyer. Acta Genet Med Gemellol 33: 557–564.Google Scholar
12.Kallman, FJ (1953): Twin data in the analysis of mechanism of inheritance. Am J Hum Genet 6: 157–162.Google Scholar
13.Kaprio, J, Koskenvuo, M, Teppo, L, Langinvainio, H, Pukkala, E, Rita, H, Sarna, S (1985): Cancer in twins and families of twins. In Müller, Hj, Weber, W (eds): Familial Cancer. Research Conference on Familial Cancer. Basel: Karger, pp 192–194.Google Scholar
14.Kaprio, J, Sarna, S, Koskenvuo, M, Rantasalo, I (1978): The Finnish Twin Registry: Formation and compilation, questionnaire study, zygosity determination procedures and research program. In Nance, WE (ed): Twin Research: Part B, Biology and Epidemiology. New York: Alan R Liss, pp 179–184.Google Scholar
15.Lange, K, Westlake, J, Spence, MA (1976): Extensions to pedigree analysis. III. Variance components by the scoring method. Ann Hum Genet 39: 485–491.Google ScholarPubMed
16.Li, CC (1980): Half-sib analysis of quantitative data. In Mielke, JH, Crawford, MH (eds): Current Developments in Anthropological Genetics: Vol 1, Theory and Methods. New York: Plenum Press, pp 373–396.Google Scholar
17.Logan, WPD, Lambert, PM (1975): Vital statistics. In Hobson, W (ed): The Theory and Practice of Public Health, 4th edition. London: Oxford University Press, pp 8–28.Google Scholar
18.Lykken, DT, Tellegin, A, DuRubeis, R (1978): Volunteer bias in twin research: the rule of two-thirds. SocBiol 25: 1–9.Google Scholar
19.McGue, M, Rao, DC, Iselius, L, Russell, JM (1985): Resolution of genetic and cultural inheritance in twin families by path analysis: application to HDL-cholesterol. Am J Hum Genet 37: 998–1014.Google ScholarPubMed
20.Nance, WE (1984): The relevance of twin studies to cardiovascular research. In Rao, DC, Elston, RC, Kuller, LH, Certer, C, Havlik, R (eds): Genetic Epidemiology of Coronary Heart Disease: Past, Present and Future. New York: Alan R Liss, pp 325–348.Google Scholar
21.Nance, WE, Corey, LA (1976): Genetic models for the analysis of data from the families of identical twins. Genetics 83: 811–826.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
22.Nance, WE, Corey, LA, Rose, RJ, Eaves, LJ (1981): Relevance of the marriage of twins to the casual analysis of nonrandom mating. In Gedda, L, Parisi, P, Nance, WE (eds): Twin Research 3. Part B, Intelligence, Personality, and Development, New York: Alan R Liss, pp 61–71.Google Scholar
23.Nance, WE, Nakata, M, Paul, TD, Yu, P (1974): The use of twin studies in the analysis of phenotyp-ic traits in man. In Jeanerich, DT, Skalko, RG and Porter, JH (eds): Congenital Defects. New York: Academic Press, pp 23–49.Google Scholar
24.Reed, T, Evans, MM, Norton, JA Jr, Christian, JC (1979): Maternal effects on fingertip dermatogly-phics. Am J Hum Genet 13: 315–323.Google Scholar
25.Rose, RJ, Boughmon, JA, Corey, LA, Nance, WE, Christian, JC, Kang, KW (1980): Data from kinships of monozygotic twins indicate maternal effects on verbal intelligence. Nature 283:375–377.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
26.Rose, RJ, Harris, EL, Christian, JC, Nance, WE (1979): Genetic variance in nonverbal intelligence: Data from the kinships of identical twins. Science 205: 1153–1155.Google Scholar
27.Rose, RJ, Miller, JZ, Dumont-Driscoll, M, Evans, ME (1979): Twin-family studies of percentual speed ability. Behav Genet 9: 71–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28.Rose, RJ, Miller, JZ, Grim, CE, Christian, JC (1979): Aggregation of blood pressure in the families of identical twins. Am J Epidemiol 109: 503–511.Google Scholar
29.Sarna, S, Kaprio, J, Sistonen, P, Koskenvuo, M (1978): Diagnosis of twin zygosity by mailed questionnaire. Hum Hered 28:241–254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
30.Yu, PL, Bader, P, Bingle, G, Winter, P, Nance, WE (1973): Genetic studies of the offspring of identical twins. Am J Hum Genet 25:89a.Google Scholar