ISSN:
1573-3297
Keywords:
Heritability
;
public communication
;
obesity
;
body mass index
;
quantitative traits
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Biology
,
Psychology
Notes:
Abstract It is well established that many continuously distributed traits have a heritable component. However, it is often difficult to communicate to the general public the meaning of quantitative estimates of heritability. To address this problem, the present paper introduces a heuristic for communicating heritability to nonscientific audiences. This heuristic involves adopting an extremely simplified model of inheritance and artificially (and somewhat arbitrarily) defining a cutoffs of “low environmental risk” and “affectation status.” Using body weight and obesity as an example, we present a table which gives estimates of the proportion of obese persons who are “genetically obese” assuming varying levels of “environmental risk” for obesity and relative body weight scores for defining obesity. The resulting statistic may prove useful for lay audiences in understanding a heritability estimate.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1025670316169
