TESTING FOR HOMOGENEITY OF HARDY-WEINBERG DISEQUILIBRIUM USING DATA SAMPLED FROM SEVERAL POPULATIONS

Olson (1993, Annals of Human Genetics 57, 291-295) proposed a large-sa mple test of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium when genotype data are sampled from several populations with different allele frequencies. The test assumes that a ratio measure of disequilibrium is constant across the populations. In this paper, we consider the problem of testing the ass umption of homogeneity of that ratio and propose both a large-sample t est and an exact test. The large-sample test is appropriate if sample sizes in all strata are sufficiently large, but is strongly anticonser vative if some strata are. small. In the latter case, the exact test i s preferred and we approximate the P-value of this test using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach.