title: Power of the classical twin design revisited.
abstract: Statistical power of the classical twin design was revisited. The approximate sampling variances of a least-squares estimate of the heritability in a univariate analysis and estimate of the genetic correlation coefficient in a bivariate analysis were derived analytically for the ACE model. Statistical power to detect additive genetic variation under the ACE model was derived analytically for least-squares, goodness-of-fit and maximum likelihood-based test statistics. The noncentrality parameter for the likelihood ratio test statistic is shown to be a simple function of the MZ and DZ intraclass correlation coefficients and the proportion of MZ and DZ twin pairs in the sample. All theoretical results were validated using simulation. The derived expressions can be used to calculate power of the classical twin design in a simple and rapid manner.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. peter.visscher@ed.ac.uk
authors.forename: Peter M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Visscher
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004777:Environment; D005823:Genetics; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic; D014427:Twins