Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Oct;19(5):319-323.
doi: 10.1177/0963721410383977.

All in the Family: Comparing Siblings to Test Causal Hypotheses Regarding Environmental Influences on Behavior

Benjamin B Lahey  1 , Brian M D'Onofrio
Affiliations

All in the Family: Comparing Siblings to Test Causal Hypotheses Regarding Environmental Influences on Behavior

Benjamin B Lahey et al. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2010 Oct.

Abstract

Psychologists in both basic and applied fields are keenly interested in the environmental influences that shape our lives. Therefore, researchers test causal hypotheses to construct models of environmental influences that can withstand attempts at refutation. Randomized experiments provide the strongest tests of causal hypotheses, but are not always feasible and their assumptions cannot always be met. In such cases, a number of quasi-experimental research designs can be used to substantially reduce confounding in tests of causal hypotheses. Sibling-comparison designs provide robust quasi-experimental tests of causal environmental hypotheses, but they are underused in psychology in spite of their power, feasibility, and convenience.

Keywords: Sibling comparisons; causal models; environmental influences; quasi-experiments.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Risk for convictions for violent offenses over increasing age in offspring who were, or were not, exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy (SDP). The top panel presents the association between SDP and convictions in the population (N = 609,372). The bottom panel shows the lack of association between SDP and convictions found when a subgroup of 29,482 siblings in the same families who were differentially exposed to SDP were compared. Estimates of risk are based on Kaplan-Meier estimates controlling for offspring sex and birth order (D'Onofrio et al., 2010).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bjorklund A, Ginther DK, Sundstrom M. Family structure and child outcomes in the USA and Sweden. Journal of Population Economics. 2007;20:183–201.
    1. Bohlmark A. Age at immigration and school performance: A siblings analysis using swedish register data. Labour Economics. 2008;15:1366–1387.
    1. Burt A. A mechanistic explanation of popularity: Genes, rule breaking, and evocative gene-environment correlations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2009;96:783–794. - PubMed
    1. D'Onofrio BM, Singh AL, Iliadou A, Lambe M, Hultman CM, Grann M, et al. Familial confounding of the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring criminality: A population-based study in Sweden. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2010;67:529–538. - PMC - PubMed
    1. D'Onofrio BM, Van Hulle CA, Waldman ID, Rodgers JL, Harden KP, Rathouz PJ, et al. Smoking during pregnancy and offspring externalizing problems: An exploration of genetic and environmental confounds. Development and Psychopathology. 2008;20:139–164. - PMC - PubMed

RECOMMENDED READINGS

    1. Rodgers JL, Cleveland H, van den Oord E, Rowe DC. A powerful and highly accessible example of the use of sibling comparisons to test a causal hypothesis in psychology. 2000 (See references).
    1. Rutter M. This clearly written paper strongly urges psychologists to stop describing correlations and conduct tests of causal hypotheses using randomized experiments and quasi-experimental designs. 2007b (See references).

    1. Shadish WR. Campbell and Rubin: A primer and comparison of their approaches to causal inference in field settings. Psychological Methods. 2010;15:3–17. This paper and the paper by <underline>West</underline> and <underline>Thoemmes</underline> (2010) below provide very readable and informative comparisons and contrasts of the two primary modern approaches to testing causal hypotheses using non-experimental designs, of which sibling-comparison designs are an example.

    1. West SG. A clear and thoughtful discuss of the value of quasi-experimental designs when randomized experiments cannot be conducted. 2009 (See references).
    1. West SG, Thoemmes F. Campbell’s and Rubin’s perspectives on causal inference. Psychological Methods. 2010;15:18–37. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources