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Multivariate Genetic Analysis

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Handbook of Behavior Genetics

The main goal of behavior genetics’ research is to understand the causes of variation in (human) traits. When single traits are considered, observed trait variation is decomposed into sources of genetic and environmental variation. A genetically informative design, such as the classical twin design, allows estimating the relative contributions of these sources of variation. When multiple traits are considered, genetically informative designs additionally allow investigating the causes of co-variation between two or more traits. Such multivariate genetic analyses are usually more powerful than univariate genetic analyses (Schmitz, Cherny,&Fulker 1998), may aid in understanding underlying biological mechanisms, and may provide a faster route to gene-finding and elucidating environmental factors that influence a trait (Leboyer et al., 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Psychology, Section Medical Genomics, and Section Functional Genomics, Vrije Universiteit and Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam 1081BT, The Netherlands

    Danielle Posthuma

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  1. Danielle Posthuma
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Correspondence to Danielle Posthuma .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Yong-Kyu Kim Ph.D

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Posthuma, D. (2009). Multivariate Genetic Analysis. In: Kim, YK. (eds) Handbook of Behavior Genetics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76727-7_4

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