At the time of this study, Jason M. Fletcher was with the Department of Health Policy and Management, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, Columbia University, New York, NY. Dalton Conley was with the Department of Sociology, the School of Medicine, and the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, New York.
Am J Public Health. 2013 Oct;103 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S42-5. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301290. Epub 2013 Aug 8.
The integration of genetics and the social sciences will lead to a more complex understanding of the articulation between social and biological processes, although the empirical difficulties inherent in this integration are large. One key challenge is the implications of moving "outside the lab" and away from the experimental tools available for research with model organisms. Social science research methods used to examine human behavior in nonexperimental, real-world settings to date have not been fully taken advantage of during this disciplinary integration, especially in the form of gene-environment interaction research. This article outlines and provides examples of several prominent research designs that should be used in gene-environment research and highlights a key benefit to geneticists of working with social scientists.
遗传学与社会科学的融合将导致对社会与生物过程之间的相互关系有更复杂的理解，尽管这种融合所固有的经验困难很大。一个关键挑战是，从“实验室之外”以及从用于对模式生物进行研究的实验工具出发，将会产生怎样的影响。在这种学科融合中，迄今为止，在非实验、真实环境中研究人类行为的社会科学研究方法尚未得到充分利用，尤其是在基因-环境相互作用研究的形式中。本文概述了应在基因-环境研究中使用的几种重要研究设计，并举例说明，同时还强调了遗传学家与社会科学家合作的一个关键好处。
