A $6.8 million study at the University of Colorado at Boulder will examine three generations of families in an effort to determine the influence of genetics in problem alcohol use.
The five-year study also will collect extensive information on environmental factors such as marital status, education and employment in an attempt to disentangle the influences of the environment and genetics on problem alcohol use.
The federally funded study is based on a nationwide group of more than 1,500 adolescents who have been interviewed by CU-Boulder researchers at various stages of their lives since 1976. The respondents - now in their late 30s and early 40s -- will be compared with two additional CU-Boulder databases of twins and adopted children.
Making comparisons between the three groups will enable researchers to do analyses that have never before been attempted, according to sociology Professor Delbert Elliott, the study's principal investigator and director of the CU-Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.
"Our hope is to understand why there are differences in life-course trajectories that put some people at high risk of violence, drug use and criminal behavior," Elliott said. "We believe both learned experiences and heritable traits are involved in these individual differences."
Elliott will be joined in the study by CU researchers Jennifer Grotpeter, David Huizinga and Scott Menard of the Institute of Behavioral Science and Robin Corley, John DeFries, John Hewitt, Andrew Smolen, Michael Stallings and Susan Young of the Institute for Behavioral Genetics.
The collaboration will enable IBS researchers to combine their extensive database and expertise in tracking environmental influences on behavior with IBG researchers' expertise in genetics. The researchers also will combine their expertise in fields including statistics, biology, psychology, pharmacy and biochemistry, sociology, criminology and genetics.
The study is funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research.