On 3/1/06, Austin Nichols <[email protected]> wrote:
> As for the claim due to Neil Shephard <[email protected]> that
> "A further problem with this is that it also assumes that children are
> literally that, ie. they are considered to be legally considered as
> children."
> Well. Hmm. It is a problem defining children as children?
>
> If Scott Cunningham <[email protected]> had wanted to count
> biological children, he would have said so, and it would not make
> sense to count them at the household level, probably. "In the field
> of human genetics" would you count adopted children or only offspring
> when answering Scott's question?
>
> Now foster children, counting kids at the family level, that's tricky.
Apologies for the lack of clarity, in human genetics because the
interest is in heritable factors adopted children are of little
interest since they do not share any genetic material with the
individuals who have adopted them.*
I confess I did not go back and read the original posting from six
days ago which made the assumption that children are those aged < 19,
and can only apologise for that. But there may be instances where
there are children >= 19 living at home, or grandparents living with
their off-spring, so would you then count their offspring (the
parents) as children? This is what prompted my posting, althoug had I
been more fastidious and returned to the original posting (which I had
not seen on the list) then I would not have made any posting.
The FAQ referenced (which I was totally unaware of and have now read,
and I thank you for bringing it to my attention) is very useful and
the structure described is very similar to that which is widely used
in human genetics which is descibed in chapter 2.7 at...
http://linkage.rockefeller.edu/soft/linkage/
and also at...
http://www.sph.umich.edu/csg/abecasis/Merlin/tour/input_files.html
(This stems from the structure used in the first program written to
handle pedigree data, LIPED, which came out in 1976 and was written by
Jurg Ott).
The main difference between the two structures is that in the LINKAGE
format there are never any missing parental identifiers, they are
assigned ID's, and sexes even if there is no actual data, as you still
need to know who the founders are from which the genetic markers will
have been inherited and which you are attempting to trace through the
pedigree.
I apologise for the inappropriate intrusion on the thread, and shall
remember in the future to read the original posting prior to posting
in the future.
Must get back to work now,
Neil
* Interestingly you do come across instances where people have
volunteered to participate in family studies, and have had the
reasoning explained to them but still volunteer to participate
(themselves and their 'off-spring'), and after genotyping it is clear
that the 'off-spring' are not related to the parents, this may be
because they have not informed the adopted child. Even more
intersting is that you occasinally come across instances of
non-parentage, where its clear that the biological mother is indeed
the biological mother, but the father has clearly not sired the
off-spring, it may have been the 'milkman'. Obviously confidentiality
prevents researchers from knowing the true identity of people enrolled
in studies as identifiers are used instead of names and under the
ethics of such studies information is not allowed to be passed back to
the participants.
--
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plausible, and wrong." - H. L. Mencken
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