Reconstructing childhood health histories

Reconstructing childhood health histories.

This article provides evidence about the quality of retrospective childhood health histories given to respondents in the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Even though information on early life health events is critical, there is legitimate skepticism about the ability of older respondents to remember specific health problems that they had during c...

Histories of Childhood

Reconstructing population histories from single nucleotide polymorphism data.

Population genetics encompasses a strong theoretical and applied research tradition on the multiple demographic processes that shape genetic variation present within a species. When several distinct populations exist in the current generation, it is often natural to consider the pattern of their divergence from a single ancestral population in terms of a binary tree structure. Inference about s...

Reconstructing Histories of Complex Gene Clusters on a Phylogeny

Clusters of genes that have evolved by repeated segmental duplication present difficult challenges throughout genomic analysis, from sequence assembly to functional analysis. These clusters are one of the major sources of evolutionary innovation, and they are linked to multiple diseases, including HIV and a variety of cancers. Understanding their evolutionary histories is a key to the applicati...

Life Histories and Mental Health

A life history approach to understanding four diverse mental health outcomes is presented. The central aim is to begin with richly detailed, “thick” descriptions of individuals’ lives and from them, to discern generalizable features to account for targeted outcomes. Conceptual principles guiding the organization and interpretation of life history information are summarized. Data from the Wiscon...