BayesTwin: An R Package for Bayesian Inference of Item-Level Twin Data. Issue 1 (14th November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schwabe, Inga
• Is Part Of: Journal of open research software. Volume 5:Issue 1(2017)
• Publication Date: 2017-11-14
• Subjects: Heritability -- Bayesian inference -- Twin data -- Genetics -- Item response theory -- Measurement error -- Genotype-environment interaction -- R -- Software package; Computer software -- Reusability -- Periodicals; Open source software -- Periodicals; 005
• DOI: 10.5334/jors.185
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2049-9647

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.