What is the Zygosity Questionnaire for Young Twins and is it available for researchers?
The Zygosity Questionnaire for Young Twins (Goldsmith, 1991) is used to diagnose zygosity when DNA methods are not available. Although diagnosing zygosity by bloodtyping or “DNA fingerprinting” are the preferred methods, they are also expensive and can be difficult to justify for infants or toddlers. The Zygosity Questionnaire for Young Twins yields 95% agreement with bloodtyping and is a practical alternative. In the 10% of cases in which the questionnaire yields ambiguous results, it will be supplemented with DNA fingerprinting in the future. For more information, see Dr. Goldsmith’s measures.
