adoption studies

Question 1

what are adoption studies looking at?

Answer 1

• the impact of nurture on children who are raised by non-biological parents

Question 2

why use adopted kids?

Answer 2

• no biological connection between the non-biological parents with the child therefore if the child grows up to share traits of his non-biological family we know that nurture is involved.

Question 3

what makes adoption studies more valid if it is available?

Answer 3

• access to the biological parents to be sure that the behaviour is not genetic but instead down to nurture and the environment the child has been brought up in.

Question 4

how are adoption studies measured?

Answer 4

• using correlations

- seeing if there is a relationship between the behaviour of the child and their parents

Question 5

what does it mean if the correlation is higher with adoptive parents?

Answer 5

nurture

Question 6

what does it mean if the correlation is higher with biological parents

Answer 6

nature

Question 7

generalisability for adoption studies?

Answer 7

• adopted children are obviously required and therefore may lack generalisability as it isn’t very representative of the whole population

Question 8

application ?

Answer 8

• they tell us whether good parenting can correct bad genes which allows kids a second chance.

Question 9

how may these studies lack validity?

Answer 9

• there are a number of confounding variables that take place
• for example some agencies try to match the adoptive parents as closely as possible to the biological parents.

Question 10

ethical issues?

Answer 10

• obviously no informed consent can be gathered from a child a bitch but presumptive support.
• danger with adoption studies is that they may cause a rift in the family.