Decomposition of Mean Sex Differences in Alcohol Use Within a Genetic Factor Model

Richardson, G. B.; Boutwell, Brian B.

doi:10.1007/s10519-020-10004-0

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…For other research using these MIDUS measures of alcohol consumption, see the studies by Goldwater and colleagues 16 and Richardson and Boutwell. 17 To index a moderate versus high average level of alcohol consumption, respondents were first asked: During the past month, how often did you drink any alcoholic beverages, on the average? Responses were scaled to the average number of drinking days per week.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Magidson et al, 22 a continuous measure indexed the total number of alcohol problems. Following Richardson and Boutwell 17 and Glei and Weinstein, 23 a binary measure indexed multiple alcohol problems. To link our definition of multiple alcohol problems to diagnostic criteria for alcohol use disorder, 24 a cut off of 2 was used to index multiple alcohol problems, contrasting ≤1 problem (score=0) with ≥2 problems (score=1).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Binge Drinking and Alcohol Problems Among Moderate Average-Level Drinkers

Holahan

Moos

2022

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Binge Drinking and Alcohol Problems Among Moderate Average-Level Drinkers

Holahan

Moos

2022

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

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“…Future research could further address genetic confounding by using multivariate genetic factor models and data from nontwin siblings and cousins discordant for age and years of exposure to father absence. Interested scholars could also test genetic factor models with mean structures (see Richardson & Boutwell, 2020) against father present and absence groups of twins and other siblings to estimate the role of genetic and environmental factors in creating mean differences in the timing of reproductive milestones. Recent research suggests it might be significant to compare violence exposed and unexposed groups as well, if enough exposed siblings can be sampled (Dinh & Gangestad, 2023;Međedovic ́, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This strict assumption is implausible partly because of the sampling design used: one sibling group was selected on experience of a biologically intact family and the other was selected on experience of family disruption (as well as age discordance). That is, the study sampled and compared qualitatively different groups but assumed no quantitative differences in genetic and environmental influences (for a review of how researchers can test for quantitative differences between qualitatively different groups, see Richardson & Boutwell, 2020). (p. 7)…”

Section: Life History Theory and Reproductive Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is reproductive development adaptively calibrated to early experience? Evidence from a national sample of females.

Richardson,

Bates,

Ross

et al. 2024

Developmental Psychology

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Many developmental theories have not been sufficiently evaluated using designs that control for unobserved familial confounds. Our long-term goal is to determine the causal structure underlying associations between early environmental conditions and later psychosocial and health outcomes. Our overall objective in this study was to further evaluate predictions derived from applications of life history theory to female reproductive development, key among them that reproductive milestones translate early environmental risk into fertility, health, and behavioral outcomes. To this end, we used female data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and structural equation modeling to conduct increasingly severe tests, beginning with covariate control and then progressing to sibling control and behavioral genetic designs. After adjusting for confounds varying between sets of siblings, we did not find evidence that age at menarche reflected components of early environment or that any focal outcomes reflected early fragmented family structure (birth to age nine). Although we detected no links between measured environment and individual differences in age at sexual debut, we did find that it reflected both shared and nonshared influences in our behavior genetic models. Interestingly, delayed sexual debut (into young adulthood) reflected identification of parents as the greatest influences and forecasted an array of fertility-related outcomes. Taken together, these findings challenge theories suggesting menarche timing is adaptively calibrated to early environment. They also highlight the need for more research using sibling control and related designs to examine the roles of environments in development. Public Significance StatementEstimates from sibling control and ACE models suggest that age at menarche did not play an important role in linking components of the early environment to fertility, health, and behavioral outcomes later in life. Small associations between age at sexual debut and number of pregnancies, number of children, mental health, depression, and binge drinking survived sibling controls. ACE models implicated both shared and nonshared environmental influences in the etiology of age at sexual debut. However, associations between measured environments and this milestone (in the normal range of ages at debut) did not survive sibling controls, although for socioeconomic status this may be due to a lack of variance within sibling sets. Results call into question adaptive theories of the timing of age at menarche and suggest they may not provide information that is useful in public health efforts.

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“…Beyond mere characterization of the differences between men and women, there is a large literature that purports to explain these differences. Explanations frequently invoke notions such as "gender equality" (Costa et al, 2001;Schmitt, 2015;Giolla & Kajonius, 2018;Fors Connolly et al, 2020) 1 , "economic development" (Schmitt et al, 2009), "culture" (Schmitt et al, 2017), "development" (Bolle et al, 2015), "evolution" (Benenson et al, 2021), "ecological stress" (Kaiser, 2019), "genetics" (Ngun et al, 2011;Richardson & Boutwell, 2020), "neurobiology" (Stam et al, 2019;van Eijk et al, 2021), and so on 2 . The common current through all the explanations and most others out there is that they are substantial; this large literature tacitly holds that the differences between the sexes observed in its' studies are real and caused by some thing or set of things that affects changes in people's psychology.…”

Section: Substantial Explanations and The Assumption Of Substancementioning

confidence: 99%

Measurement Bias, Sex Differences, and the Implications of Substantial Theories

Lasker¹

2021

Preprint

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Personality researchers frequently invoke theories to explain why groups differ in terms of measured personality traits. Their explanations often come with additional predictions about the models used to measure those traits. Particularly, they often suggest that the models will have the same parameters for members of different groups or, inversely, that the parameters will differ so much that they explain why groups differ. I argue that theoretical predictions that are easy to test but are not often thought about can help provide support for or threaten the viability of certain theoretical explanations. In the current study, I used the case of the so-called Gender Equality Paradox and in a sample of 59 countries, showed that the data are not consistent with a wide range of existing explanations.

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Decomposition of Mean Sex Differences in Alcohol Use Within a Genetic Factor Model

Cited by 4 publications

References 30 publications

Binge Drinking and Alcohol Problems Among Moderate Average-Level Drinkers

Binge Drinking and Alcohol Problems Among Moderate Average-Level Drinkers

Is reproductive development adaptively calibrated to early experience? Evidence from a national sample of females.

Measurement Bias, Sex Differences, and the Implications of Substantial Theories

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