Genetic and Environmental Components of Adolescent Adjustment and Parental Behavior: A Multivariate Analysis

Adolescent adjustment measures may be related to each other and to the social environment in various ways. Are these relationships similar in genetic and environmental sources of covariation, or different? A multivariate behaviorgenetic analysis was made of 6 adjustment and 3 treatment composites from the study Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development, using 674 same-sex adolescent sibling pairs aged 9-11. Cholesky decompositions of the total covariance matrix yielded additive and nonadditive genetic, and shared and nonshared environmental matrices. Factor analyses led to 3 factors for all but shared environment. The first 2 factors resembled Neuroticism and Extraversion factors typically found for personality; the third factor, parental monitoring and control, appeared to have different associations in different matrices.