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Estimation of the Fraternal Birth Order Effect in the UK Biobank Data Reported by Abé et al. (2021)

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/.

  2. This was assessed with a single questionnaire item, which Abé et al. called same-sex sexual behavior (SSB). See https://biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk/showcase/search.cgi, category 100056 (sexual factors), data-field 2159.

  3. See https://biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk/showcase/search.cgi, category 100034 (family history), data-fields 1873, 1883, and 5057.

  4. See Helmers et al. (2018).

  5. The adequacy of the SSB item for a different research purpose—namely, genome-wide association studies—has been debated elsewhere (Ganna et al., 2021; Hamer et al., 2021).

  6. Previous demonstrations of the FBOE have included the finding that, for homosexual subjects, the proportion of males among older siblings is greater than the proportion of males among younger siblings, whereas for heterosexual subjects, these proportions are similar (Blanchard, 1997, Fig. 2). This result suggests that, in the presence of an FBOE, estimating numbers of older brothers under an assumption of similar proportions will produce accurate estimates for heterosexual subjects but underestimates for homosexual subjects.

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Correspondence to Ray Blanchard.

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Blanchard, R. Estimation of the Fraternal Birth Order Effect in the UK Biobank Data Reported by Abé et al. (2021). Arch Sex Behav 50, 1853–1858 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02041-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02041-5

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