Strategies for characterizing complex phenotypes and environments: General and specific family environmental predictors of young adult tobacco dependence alcohol use disorder and co-occurring problems

摘要

BackgroundDefining phenotypes in studies of tobacco and alcohol misuse is difficult because of the complexity of these behaviors and their strong association with each other and with other problem behaviors. The present paper suggests a strategy for addressing this issue by conceptualizing and partitioning variance in phenotypes into either general or substance/behavior-specific. The paper also applies the general or substance/behavior-specific conceptualization to environmental predictors of tobacco and alcohol misuse and other problem behaviors.