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This digital document is an article from Journal of Studies on Alcohol, published by Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc. on July 1, 1996. The length of the article is 8624 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser... More

This digital document is an article from Journal of Studies on Alcohol, published by Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc. on July 1, 1996. The length of the article is 8624 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: Objective: Previous research suggests that family history of alcoholism assessments may be biased by characteristics of the informant. In this report, the reliability and potential biases in offspring reports of paternal and maternal alcohol-related problems were examined in a large community sample of adult twins. Method: Subjects were volunteer participants in the Australian NH&MRC twin registry. Agreement between twin pairs on reports of paternal and maternal alcohol problems was assessed in 2,657 twin pairs (1,444 female-female pairs, 626 male-male pairs, and 587 female-male pairs). In addition, to detect systematic reporting biases, like-sex twin pairs whose paternal alcohol problems reports disagreed (n = 164) were contrasted on measures of personality, state anxiety and depression, parental rearing, alcoholism, and alcohol use. Results: Twin agreement for parental alcohol-related problems was good, with overall kappas of .66 for paternal and .58 for maternal alcohol problems. When discordant twin pairs were compared, we found that women who reported that their father had alcohol problems were significantly lower on EPQ-R Social Conformity than their twin sister who denied paternal alcohol problems; and there was a trend for men who reported that their father had alcohol problems to be higher in negative perceived parenting from father than their twin brother who denied paternal alcohol problems. Twins discordant for reporting paternal alcohol problems did not, however, differ on the major dimensions of personality, state anxiety and depression, alcoholism, or current alcohol use. Conclusions: The results of this study bolster our confidence in using the family history method to examine characteristics of offspring of alcoholics versus offspring of nonalcoholics on self-reported measures of personality and psychopathology, but suggest that some caution should be exercised when using this method to examine differences in offspring-reported perceptions of parental rearing practices. (J. Stud. Alcohol 57: 387-395, 1996)

From the supplier: The reporting of parental alcoholism by offspring is not biased by alcohol use or personality of the offspring. Twins participating in the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council twin registry generally give similar reports of parental alcoholism. Twins that disagree have similar measures of state anxiety, depression and current alcohol use. Female twins that disagree on paternal alcoholism have different Social Conformity measure. The male twin that reports paternal alcoholism has a negative perception of parenting.

Citation Details
Title: Reliability and reporting biases for perceived parental history of alcohol-related problems: agreement between twins and differences between discordant pairs.
Author: Wendy S. Slutske
Publication: Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 1996
Publisher: Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc.
Volume: v57 Issue: n4 Page: p387(9)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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