Herle Moritz, Fildes Alison, van Jaarsveld Cornelia, Rijsdijk Fruhling, Llewellyn Clare H
Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Department for Health Evidence & Department of Primary and Community Care, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Behav Genet. 2016 Nov;46(6):763-771. doi: 10.1007/s10519-016-9798-y. Epub 2016 Jul 12.
Parental perception of zygosity might bias heritability estimates derived from parent rated twin data. This is the first study to examine if similarities in parental reports of their young twins' behavior were biased by beliefs about their zygosity. Data were from Gemini, a British birth cohort of 2402 twins born in 2007. Zygosity was assessed twice, using both DNA and a validated parent report questionnaire at 8 (SD = 2.1) and 29 months (SD = 3.3). 220/731 (8 months) and 119/453 (29 months) monozygotic (MZ) pairs were misclassified as dizygotic (DZ) by parents; whereas only 6/797 (8 months) and 2/445 (29 months) DZ pairs were misclassified as MZ. Intraclass correlations for parent reported eating behaviors (four measured at 8 months; five at 16 months) were of the same magnitude for correctly classified and misclassified MZ pairs, suggesting that parental zygosity perception does not influence reporting on eating behaviors of their young twins.
父母对双胞胎类型的认知可能会使源自父母对双胞胎评分数据的遗传度估计产生偏差。这是第一项研究，旨在探究父母对其年幼双胞胎行为报告中的相似性是否会因他们对双胞胎类型的认知而产生偏差。数据来自双子座研究，这是一个英国出生队列，包含2007年出生的2402对双胞胎。分别在8个月（标准差 = 2.1）和29个月（标准差 = 3.3）时，使用DNA和一份经过验证的父母报告问卷对双胞胎类型进行了两次评估。在8个月时，220/731对同卵双胞胎（MZ）被父母误分类为异卵双胞胎（DZ）；在29个月时，119/453对同卵双胞胎被误分类。而在8个月时，只有6/797对异卵双胞胎被误分类为同卵双胞胎；在29个月时，只有2/445对被误分类。对于正确分类和误分类的同卵双胞胎，父母报告的饮食行为（8个月时测量了4种；16个月时测量了5种）的组内相关性大小相同，这表明父母对双胞胎类型的认知不会影响他们对年幼双胞胎饮食行为的报告。
