Summary of Rethinking Twins and Environments: Possible Social

Summary of Rethinking Twins and Environments: Possible Social

 Sources for Assumed Genetically Influences in Twin Research*

The study presented below is about identical and fraternal twin’s adolescence, and are the notions of how society perceives them true? How much influence does environmental and social factors affect them? Two scenarios was used alcohol and depression prone, This study tested the assumptions of the environment by bringing out which adolescence identical twins compared to fraternal twins has a greater effect from social and genetic influences. From the results involving two variables it was brought out that identical twins have greater similarity than fraternal twins in characteristics, examples such as physical attractiveness, use of alcohol, social circles. On multiple observations and analysis of more than one statistical variable at a time, measures of social environment reduces or eliminate obvious genetic effects. This brings out social variables are usually stronger predictors of depressions and alcohol use and abuse

1. What are the variables or issues of interest in the study?

The variables or issues of interest in this study is to address a sociology problem “to what extent does genetic and environment influence human behavior” the specific humans in this article are  which sets of twins identical or fraternal, shows greater similarity display common social; environments (P. 112)

2. What is the study’s hypothesis?

The hypothesis is to test the equal environment assumption by examining the extent to which greater concordance of adolescent identical compared to fraternal twins results from a social and genetic influence (p. 111).

3. Who specifically were the participants in the study and how were they selected?

 The primary sample began with all high schools in the United States who had at least 30 students and had an 11th grade program. Schools were sectioned by region, urbanicity, school type, percentage of white kids. 80 high schools were selected through a random sample proportional to enrollment size. All students selected did a 60 minute survey. The study oversampled “paired” adolescent by selecting an in home interviews for those who indicated they were twins in the survey (P. 115)

4. What research method was used in the study, experimentation or correlation?

The research method that was used in this study is correlational method because it measures to the extent in which two variables relate, also Quantitative data was used, the researcher did not have control over the variables, and numbers tell the story (P.115)

5. What did the researcher have the participants do? Explain in some detail?

Two outcomes were used, depression and alcohol use and abuse, to examine these issues in a population of adolescent males and females. Firstly the participants took a 45-60 minute survey, this is how it was determine how many identical and fraternal twins to be used in the study, three variables were used here (P.115)

Independent variables

The participants had interviews where they were given a code 1 for fraternal and a code 0 for identical, followed by attractiveness difference scores, interviewers rated the  participants on a 5 point scale from very unattractive to very attractive, here twins pairs were measured examining differences in the ratings of physical attractiveness. Social contact used two models of measures. The first assessed the amount of overlap in twin’s friendship and networks, a question was posed “How much time they and their twin spent with the same friend or group of friends”. The second assessment is a global measure of the amount of time twins spend together. Behavior of best friends was explored, adolescent were asked how many of their three best friends engage in variety of behaviors. For alcohol “How many of your 3 best friends drink alcohol at least once a month” 0 is noted if they indicated the same number of friends, 1 if they indicated a different number of friends (P.116).

Control Variables

These factors were constant, the age of the twins were calculated using birth month and year and the month and the year of the in-home interviews. Race/Ethnicity was also grouped into four categories, Black, white, Hispanic and other a residual category. Parental education being the most education their individual parent competed, 1 for those who completed high school, 0 for those who did not.

Dependent Variables

The dependent variables were different scores between pairs in each outcome, each respondent score was calculated, a difference score was also calculated for each pair of twin by taking the difference between the twin’s scores. For example a difference score of zero indicated that either both twins tried alcohol or neither twins tried alcohol, if 1 was the result it meant one twin tried it and the other did not. Also the following dependent variables which the researchers showed it affected the independent variable are, body mass index, Depression,

6. What if any ethical issues were identified in the study?

Reading the article, I did not underline or nor was I able to note any ethical issues with the research study conducted, I did note in the beginning of the article, if a high school refused to participate, another school was selected out of the same stratum and no reason was mentioned why the high school refused to participate.

7. What were the major findings of the research paper?

The major purpose of this article was to test whether social factor mediate Genetic influence, the results are shown in a tabular form on page 119 of the article. Also a major finding was with the results of the identical twins, the world has a perceive notion about an attractive individual, in the case where by in identical twins if one is attractive both of them are perceived by the society as being attractive and that determines their outcome in society and also depression prone factors was non-significant, when social factors were concerned.. In fraternal twins, being they could boy and girl, who are the complete opposite of one another in looks and physique, the way society perceives them contributes greatly to their alcohol influence and depression prone. Although the data indicated genetic influences on both the frequency and binge drinking among male twins, social factors was the strongest of these behaviors. Furthermore from the study I gathered that genetic similarities alone like physical trait affected the similarities between twins. This study results emphasized to society “ to consider social sources of assumed genetically determined similarities in behavior and be cautious before reaching any sweeping conclusions about this multifaceted issue”. (P. 125)