The influence of response bias on segregation and linkage analysis

Response bias in epidemiologic studies can occur if affected individuals are more (or less) likely to participate in a survey than their unaffected counterparts. To examine the effect of response bias in the context of a family study, we conducted segregation and linkage analysis in all 1,000 individuals in the Problem 2 data set, and in two different 65% samples: one sample consisting of 648 randomly selected individuals, and the other sample nonrandomly constructed so that individuals with high levels of Q1 were oversampled. In this simulation the ability to detect major genes for Q1-Q4 in segregation analysis and to link these putative major genes to genetic markers in linkage analysis was not markedly different between the 65% random and the 65% enriched samples.