Simulating two- and three-generation pedigree data for genetic epidemiology research

Apart from collection of real pedigree data, it is also very important to have simulated pedigree data in genetic epidemiology research. The simulated data can be used to compare the efficiency of different statistical models and to investigate some phenomena that cannot be answered by the real data. Using Stata to simulate the pedigree data has advantages over using computer languages (e.g. C++ or Fortran) because the random numbers of some common probability distributions can be easily simulated by the software. Here we introduce two Stata programs, simuped2 and simuped3, which can be used to simulate two- and three-generation pedigree data, respectively. Variables generated by these programs include family ID, individual ID, generation, age, gender, and genotype.