The aim of this workshop was to gather together a sufficiently expert group with interests ranging across diverse areas of genetic epidemiological application in order to focus on the computational and methodological issues that are common to family studies, genetic association studies and the analyses of complex traits. One objective was to assess existing methods of analysis of large and complex datasets, to consider appropriate adaptation of these methods and to investigate the potential for new methods which address common problematic features of all these datasets. Another was to actively encourage young researchers into this field by providing the opportunity to become acquainted with the main research issues in the area and to make vital contacts with the leading people and their groups in an informal small group setting.