A total of 232 individuals from 14 countries attended GAW14. Attendees included investigators from four continents: Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. The 183 contributions submitted to GAW14 were organized into 18 presentation groups of 7 to 15 papers each. The papers were grouped based on common methodological themes. Because the datasets were similar in many important aspects, and could be used to explore similar analytical problems, most presentation groups were assigned with no regard to the dataset analyzed. Thus, many of the groups of papers include analyses of both the simulated data and the COGA data. Within each presentation group, a co-author with previous GAW experience was asked to serve as group leader to facilitate group discussion, organize an oral presentation for the group, and take the lead in writing the group summary papers that will be published in Genetic Epidemiology. The 18 presentation groups were organized around common methodological issues: comparisons of SNPs versus microsatellite markers in linkage studies, integration of SNPs and microsatellites in linkage and association studies, linkage mapping methods, quantitative trait mapping, fine mapping, methods
