- Source: Midparent
In human genetics the midparent value of a trait is defined as the average of the trait value of the father and a scaled version of that of the mother. This value can be used in a study to analyze the data set without heeding sex effects. Studying quantitative traits in heritability studies may be complicated by sex differences observed for the trait.
Well-known examples include studies of humans' height, whose midparent value hmp is given by:
h
m
p
=
h
f
+
(
1.08
×
h
m
)
2
{\displaystyle h_{mp}={\frac {h_{f}+(1.08\times h_{m})}{2}}}
where hf is the father's height, and hm the mother's.
The coefficient 1.08 serves as a scaling factor. After the 1.08 scaling, the mean of the mother's height is the same as that of the father's, and the variance is closer to the father's; in this way, sex difference can be ignored.
