The aetiology of educational attainment
A nuclear twin family study into the genetic and environmental influences on school leaving certificates
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5264706 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eike Friederike Eifler (0000-0003-4789-2010, Bielefeld University Germany, corresponding author), Rainer Riemann (0000-0001-5805-4536, Bielefeld University Germany) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 881-897 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Educational Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0998 • E-ISSN: 2044-8279 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/bjep.12478 |
| PMID | 34889458 |
| OpenAlex | W4200582453 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 44 |
BackgroundEducational attainment is connected to many important life outcomes, and the previous research has already focused on identifying its genetic and environmental components. However, most of these studies used twin data only and did not incorporate information from other family members. Twin studies typically decompose the phenotypic variance into genetic, shared, and unique environment components. In this study design, the shared environment component encompasses the influence of parents and the shared environments of twins and siblings independent of parents (e.g., teachers, schools, and peers). The classical twin design (CTD) conflates these influences as part of the shared environment. This shortcoming can be overcome using the nuclear twin family design (NTFD), which enables separation of the parental and shared twin/sibling environmental components.AimsThe aim of this study was to broaden the understanding of the aetiology of educational attainment using the nuclear twin family design to provide a detailed account of the genetic and environmental effects on the type of school leaving certificate.SampleThe data of 1,048 monozygotic and 916 dizygotic same-sex twins, their biological parents, and non-twin full biological siblings of the German project TwinLife were used in the nuclear twin family design.MethodsStructural equation modelling (SEM) techniques were used to analyse the variance-covariance patterns of the ordinal outcome variable.ResultsGenetic influences were found to make up around 60% of variance, whilst environmental influences shared by all siblings, educational influences shared by the twins only, and non-shared environmental influences explained the remaining variance in equal amounts. Environmental transmission from parent to offspring was found to be negligible.ConclusionThrough its advanced design, our study extends the previous work enabling more detailed and robust estimations of sources of variance and contributes to a better understanding of the complex aetiology of educational attainment
Behavioural genetics · Biology · Developmental psychology · Dizygotic twins · Educational attainment · Heritability · Monozygotic twin · Nuclear family · Sibling · Sociology · Statistics · Structural equation modeling · Twin study · Variance (accounting) · Cognitive Abilities and Testing · Genetics · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Psychology · Psychometric Methodologies and Testing · Social Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |