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Birth Order and Family Size: Bias Caused by Changes in Birth Rate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

E. H. Hare  and
J. S. Price
E. H. Hare
Affiliation:
Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals, London, S.E.5
J. S. Price
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Psychiatric Genetics Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London, S.E.5
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Extract

In a previous paper (Price and Hare, 1969) we drew attention to some types of bias which may complicate the search for a useful association between disease and birth order. In particular, we considered biases occurring in a sample of adult patients where the patients' mothers have all passed their reproductive period and where, therefore, the sibships of the patients are complete. In such a sample, the recognized methods of searching for an association between disease and birth order are based on the assumption, that, for a null hypothesis, the sample will be randomly distributed among the birth ranks for each sibship size. But in fact the distribution may be non-random, and there are two main causes for this. These are (i) changes in the birth rate of the population, and (ii) changes in the birth rank distribution of the patients between birth and the age-range from which the sample is selected (e.g. differential rates of mortality or migration). The principal aim in the present paper is to illustrate the bias arising from the first of these causes.

Type
Birth Order
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 115 , Issue 523 , June 1969 , pp. 647 - 657
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1969 

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