There has been a history of skepticism surrounding GxE interactions (Duncan & Keller, 2011; Eaves, 2006; Kendler & Gardner, 2010; McClelland & Judd, 1993). Such skepticism reiterates the importance of approaching GxE analyses cautiously and systematically and the need to re-visit previous findings when new statistical models become available in the field. The results of the current study, where we examined GxE effects for adolescent alcohol use frequency in the context of three salient environments (parental knowledge, peer deviance, and potentially stressful life events) address two issues that are relevant for assessing the robustness of previous GxE findings in the area of adolescent externalizing behavior: first, the importance of evaluating different models to test for GxE; and second, the importance of assessing whether any effects that emerge are robust to non-linear transformations of the behavioral outcome. We discuss each of these points in turn.
