Study
MTFS was established in June 1989 using same-gendered twin pairs age 11 or 17. All twins born in MN at that time were invited to participate using birth registry data. 500 additional 11 year old twin-pairs were added in 2000. Twin studies are valuable to researchers because identical twins share 100% of their genes and fraternal twins share, on average, 50% of their genes. Both identical and fraternal twins share certain aspects of their environment (e.g. religious practices in the home). This allows researchers to estimate the heritability of certain traits. Participants are asked about academic ability, personality, and interests; family and social relationships; mental and physical health; physiological measurements. Of interest to researchers are prevalence of psychopathology, substance abuse, divorce, leadership, and other traits and behaviors related to mental and physical health, relationships, and religiosity.
Read more about this topic: Minnesota Twin Family Study
Famous quotes containing the word study:
“Why should I seek for love or study it?
It is of God and passes human wit;
I study hatred with great diligence,
For that’s a passion in my own control,
A sort of besom that can clear the soul
Of everything that is not mind or sense.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)