Chunk #89 — 7.0 Recommendations to Advance Endophenotype Genetics — 7.3 Adequate power to detect individual effects is crucial but almost never attained in existing endophenotype genetic association studies — 7.3.1. Power and sampling schemes in GWAS
A representative community-based sample, on the other hand, allows one to investigate any number of (endo) phenotypes without this problem. If the purpose of the field then is to discover genes associated with a wide variety of endophenotypes and their associated clinical disorders, spending scarce resources on a few large community-based samples with many phenotypes can be a more efficient strategy than spending those resources on many smaller extreme sampling designs, each for a handful of phenotypes. This is especially true for endophenotypes that can be efficiently assayed (e.g., resting heart rate) in large numbers of individuals at low cost.
