Inferences on interclass and intraclass correlations in multivariate familial data (Q2640302)

In genetic research, the interclass and intraclass correlations play an important role in estimating the degree of resemblance among family members with respect to characteristics such as blood-pressure, cholesterol level, lung capacity, and so forth. This article develops inferential procedures for familial data on multiple characteristics considered simultaneously, as opposed to separately. Unified estimators are proposed based on a particular class of unbiased estimators of covariance matrices. Asymptotic distributions of the proposed estimators are derived under the assumption of multivariate normality. The results could be useful for constructing approximate confidence intervals and test procedures.