The biggest thing to understand is that DNA testing is not going to give you a detailed map of your families past. It gives you a outline with many gaps. You will still have to go through the process of researching and documenting your families history. Many people find this to be a disappointment, because they were hoping for a easier way to do their family history.
The DNA testing allows you to confirm if two people are related. This has become popular with TV shows and confirming who's the daddy. It also allows you to determine if two people descend from the same ancestor back in time. The test validates the quality of your research and will point you in the correct direction to do your research moving forward. It also allows you to determine if you are related to people that share the same surname. It will also give you clues on your families ethnic origins. Understand with this part of the testing it will improve as the DNA databases increase in size. Larger data bases will make things more accurate.
DNA testing has been around enough to work out the bugs and improve the accuracy of the testing. Growth in DNA testing has increased as they are able to bring down the costs of actually doing the testing. Costs now have moved to below $100 dollars for testing. This has helped testing to expand.
The test itself comes with a home kit that consists of swab and spit collection tube that are used to collect the sample. Collection is done by swabbing the inside of your mouth and inserting it in the collection tube. Then it is put in a return package and mailed to the test facility.
The results come back as numbers and this allows you to compare it to others that have taken the test.
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