Assessing Genetic Influences on Behavior: Informant and Context Dependency as Illustrated by the Analysis of Attention Problems

• Published in: Behavior genetics Vol. 44; no. 4; pp. 326 - 336
• Main Authors: Kan, Kees-Jan, van Beijsterveldt, Catharina E. M., Bartels, Meike, Boomsma, Dorret I.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.07.2014; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity - epidemiology; Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity - genetics; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Behavior; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Bias; Child; Clinical Psychology; Diseases in Twins - genetics; Faculty; Female; Genome-Wide Association Study; Health Psychology; Humans; Male; Mental disorders; Netherlands; Original Research; Parents; Psychology; Public Health; Ratings & rankings; Reproducibility of Results; Research Design; Teachers; Twins; Twins, Dizygotic - genetics; Twins, Monozygotic - genetics; Netherlands; Attention problems; (Missing) heritability; ADHD; Informant effects; Context dependent behavior
• ISSN: 0001-8244; 1573-3297; 1573-3297
• DOI: 10.1007/s10519-014-9657-7

Assessment of genetic influences on behavior depends on context, informants, and study design: We show (analytically) that, conditional on study design, informant specific genetic variance is included in the genetic variance component or in the environmental variance component. To aid the explanation, we present an illustrative empirical analysis of data from the Netherlands Twin Register. Subjects included 1,571 monozygotic and 2,672 dizygotic 12-year-old twin pairs whose attention problems (AP) were rated by their parents, teachers, and themselves. Heritability estimates ( h 2 ) of AP were about ~0.75 for same informant ratings (mother, father, and same teacher ratings) and ~0.54 for different informants’ ratings (different parents’, different teachers’, and two twins’ self-ratings). Awareness of assessment effects is relevant to research into psychiatric disorders. Differences in assessment can account for age effects, such as a drop in heritability of ADHD symptoms. In genome-wide association studies, effects of rating specific genetic influences will be undetectable.