Software Metapapers

BayesTwin: An R Package for Bayesian Inference of Item-Level Twin Data

Authors:

Abstract

BayesTwin is an open-source R package that serves as a pipeline to the MCMC program JAGS to perform Bayesian inference on genetically-informative hierarchical twin data. Simultaneously to the biometric model, an item response theory (IRT) measurement model is estimated, allowing analysis of the raw phenotypic (item-level) data. The integration of such a measurement model is important since earlier research has shown that an analysis based on an aggregated measure (e.g., a sum-score based analysis) can lead to an underestimation of heritability and the spurious finding of genotype-environment interactions. The package includes all common biometric and IRT models as well as functions that help plot relevant information or determine whether the analysis was performed well.

 

Funding statement: Partly funded by the PROO grant 411-12-623 from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Keywords:

HeritabilityBayesian inferenceTwin dataGeneticsItem response theoryMeasurement errorGenotype-environment interactionRSoftware package
  • Year: 2017
  • Volume: 5 Issue: 1
  • Page/Article: 33
  • DOI: 10.5334/jors.185
  • Submitted on 11 Jul 2017
  • Accepted on 9 Oct 2017
  • Published on 14 Nov 2017
  • Peer Reviewed