Adoption Studies And Kety Flashcards
What is the aim of an adoption study?
Compare characteristics between adoptive and biological families to see which family has the highest concordance rate to see if the characteristics are due to nature or nurture.
What is nature and nurture?
Nature- due to genetics
Nurture-due to environment and upbringing
What are the strengths of an adoption study?
-can be used to change an environment to stop a characteristic developing.
-can be longitudinal to see development of chanceries
What is a weakness of adoption studies?
-still not 100% environmental as adoptive parents and child are matched.
-can’t control for environment completely so can’t be sure it is definitely genetics
What is the aim of Ketys study?
-to see if there is a genetic basis for schizophrenia.
-to see if there is a higher rate of schizophrenia related illness among biological or adoptive families
What is the independent variable and dependent variable?
IV- schizophrenia suffers and a control group
DV-concordance rate of schizophrenia.
What is the sample of Ketys study?
-34 schizophrenia from the danish adoption register for Copenhagen, aged 20-43.
-group B1 was 16 ppts with chronic schizophrenia.
-group B2 was a group of 7 ppts with acute schizophrenia.
-group B3 was 11 ppts borderline schizophrenia
-33 mentally healthy controls form adoption registry
-matched to schizophrenic ptts on age,gender, age adopted and social class of adoptive family.
What are the results of Kety?
-grouped into three categories called the schizophrenic spectrum disorders
-B1-B3 was the index participants
-D1-D3 is uncertain chronic
-C is inadequate personality/scizoid
-in 4 cases no conclusion was reached and they were dropped from the study.
-Higher concordance rates between biological family of index patients than the controls
What is the conclusion to Kety?
There is a genetic component to schizophrenia
How is the study generalisable?
463 relative so large sample and more diverse.
Why is the study not generalisable?
-all participants from Copenhagen so ethnocentric
-matched characteristics between index and controls
How is the study reliable?
-4 danish psychiatrists agreed on diagnosis so higher inter-rater reliability.
-standardised procedure as looked at all medical records.
-method repeated 3 times and forums same results so triangulation of data.
How is the study applicable to real life?
Can screen people for bio cause of schizophrenia and able to have early intervention for people at high risk
How is the study valid?
-control group is matched so controls for participant variables so no impact on DV
-blind test reduces researchers bias
Why is the study not valid?
Using medical records which are susceptible to change so diagnosis may be inaccurate now.
