Methods for Assessing Familial Aggregation: Family History Measures and Confounding in the Standard Cohort, Reconstructed Cohort and Case-Control Designs

To test whether case-control-based familial aggregation studies produce estimates of risk to relatives that are inherently biased or confounded by age and family size, and to compare case-control-derived estimates with those from the reconstructed cohort method. In addition, we test if the definition of family history affects the accuracy of results obtained from either design. We use simulated data, which allows us to know the true data origin.