ASSOCIATION ARRAYS FOR THE STUDY OF FAMILIAL HEIGHT, WEIGHT, LIPID, AND LIPOPROTEIN SIMILARITY IN THREE WEST COAST POPULATIONS

R. 0. Bergelin and L. Suarez. Association arrays for the study of familial height, weight, llpld, and Iipoprotein similarity in three West Coast popula-tions. Am J Epidemiol 1982;116:1001-21. A more refined understanding of familial similarity may be achieved through a collection of measures of dependence that is sensitive to a variety of non-linear trends and stochastic relationships between trait values. Parent-offspring, spouse, and sibling similarities are examined by association arrays that assess dependence between variables for appropriate classes of func-tions (e.g., the class of all Increasing functions). The methodology is applied to height, weight, llpld, and Iipoprotein variables collected in nuclear families at the Seattle, Stanford, and La Jolla Llpid Research Clinics. Among the re-sults obtained using association arrays, there is the suggestion that spouse similarity for standardized weight Is strongest for functions emphasizing the higher values of the wives ' weight independent of the husbands ' weight, and that sibling similarity for high density Iipoprotein cholesterol concentration