Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
8776680
TITLE
Reliability and reporting biases for perceived parental history of alcohol-related problems: agreement between twins and differences between discordant pairs.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE NlmCategory: OBJECTIVE
Previous research suggests that family history of alcoholism assessments may be biased by characteristics of the informant. In this report, the reliability and potential biases in offspring reports of paternal and maternal alcohol-related problems were examined in a large community sample of adult twins.
METHOD NlmCategory: METHODS
Subjects were volunteer participants in the Australian NH&MRC twin registry. Agreement between twin pairs on reports of paternal and maternal alcohol problems was assessed in 2,657 twin pairs (1,444 female-female pairs, 626 male-male pairs, and 587 female-male pairs). In addition, to detect systematic reporting biases, like-sex twin pairs whose paternal alcohol problems reports disagreed (n = 164) were contrasted on measures of personality, state anxiety and depression, parental rearing, alcoholism, and alcohol use.
RESULTS NlmCategory: RESULTS
Twin agreement for parental alcohol-related problems was good, with overall kappas of .66 for paternal and .58 for maternal alcohol problems. When discordant twin pairs were compared, we found that women who reported that their father had alcohol problems were significantly lower on EPQ-R Social Conformity than their twin sister who denied paternal alcohol problems: and there was a trend for men who reported that their father had alcohol problems to be higher in negative perceived parenting from father than their twin brother who denied paternal alcohol problems. Twins discordant for reporting paternal alcohol problems did not, however, differ on the major dimensions of personality, state anxiety and depression, alcoholism, or current alcohol use.
CONCLUSIONS NlmCategory: CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study bolster our confidence in using the family history method to examine characteristics of offspring of alcoholics versus offspring of nonalcoholics on self-reported measures of personality and psychopathology, but suggest that some caution should be exercised when using this method to examine differences in offspring-reported perceptions of parental rearing practices.
DATE PUBLISHED
1996 Jul
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
pubmed 1996/07/01
medline 1996/07/01 00:01
entrez 1996/07/01 00:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Slutske WS Slutske W S WS Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA.
Heath AC Heath A C AC
Madden PA Madden P A PA
Bucholz KK Bucholz K K KK
Dinwiddie SH Dinwiddie S H SH
Dunne MP Dunne M P MP
Statham DJ Statham D J DJ
Martin NG Martin N G NG
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 57
ISSUE: 4
TITLE: Journal of studies on alcohol
ISOABBREVIATION: J. Stud. Alcohol
YEAR: 1996
MONTH: Jul
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 0096-882X
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: J Stud Alcohol
COUNTRY: UNITED STATES
ISSNLINKING: 0096-882X
NLMUNIQUEID: 7503813
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GRANTID AGENCY COUNTRY
AA07535 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
AA07728 NIAAA NIH HHS United States
MH17104 NIMH NIH HHS United States
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Alcoholism psychology
Attitude to Health psychology
Child of Impaired Parents psychology
Diseases in Twins psychology
Female psychology
Humans psychology
Individuality psychology
Male psychology
Middle Aged psychology
Personality Assessment statistics & numerical data
Psychometrics statistics & numerical data
Reproducibility of Results statistics & numerical data
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's