Adoption studies

Question 1

How do adoption studies work?

Answer 1

Find an adopted parent/adopted child with a specific trait

Look at how many biological family members and adopted family members also have that trait

Compare the concordance rates between biological family members and adopted family members

Question 2

What does an adoption study show?

Answer 2

Whether a behaviour is genetic (higher concordance with biological family) or environmental (higher concordance with adopted family)

Question 3

What is an example of an adoption study in Psychology?

Answer 3

Kety

Question 4

What is a strength of an adoption study in terms of usefulness?

Answer 4

They help us determine whether a behaviour is due to nature or nature - it is useful in helping us determining why a behaviour may occur.

Question 5

What is an ethical strength of an adoption study?

Answer 5

Adoption is a naturally occurring event that does not require manipulation of groups from the researcher - don’t need to worry about protection from harm etc

Question 6

What is a weakness of adoption studies in terms of validity?

Answer 6

It may be difficult to establish what is due to nature or nurture - the prenatal environment of the children may be different.
Adopted children may be adopted by a family culturally similar to their biological one and so may end up with some shared environment.

Question 7

What is a weakness of adoption studies in terms of generalisability?

Answer 7

There may be attrition (participant drop out). This is a weakness as the results in the adoption studies may not longer be representative.