Adolescents' and Parents' Genomic Testing Decisions: Associations With Age, Race, and Sex

Purpose: Adolescents will increasingly be involved in decisions about the return of genomic results. We examined adolescents' and parents' decisions about learning actual genomic research results for the adolescent and whether choices were associated with participants' demographic factors.

Methods: Adolescents aged between 13 and 17 years and a parent (dyads) were recruited through flyers, social media, employee emails, and clinic visits at a pediatric hospital. Dyads used a decision tool to independently choose the categories of conditions they wanted to learn about the adolescent. They then came together to discuss their independent decisions and make final joint decisions. Conditions were categorized by preventability, treatability, adult-onset conditions, and carrier status. Participants could make granular choices by including or excluding conditions in each category. Categorical choices were collapsed into the "aggregate choice" to learn all or not all results.

Results: Study visits were completed by 163 dyads. Adolescents were less likely than their parents to independently choose to learn all results (64.4% vs. 76.1%; p = .0056). Parents were less likely to independently choose to learn all results for their daughters than their sons (odds ratio = .41, 95% confidence interval .18-.96; p = .032). Black adolescents were less likely to independently choose to learn all results than white adolescents (odds ratio = .22; 95% confidence interval .08-.55; p = .0015). After making joint decisions, 70.6% of dyads chose to learn all results.

Conclusions: Adolescents independently wanted to learn less genomic information than their parents. Although adolescents cannot legally make genomic testing decisions without parental permission, adolescents' should be engaged in decisions about the return of genomic results.