Adoption Studys Flashcards
Adoption studys
Adoption studies are research studies that compare a adopted persons’s behaviors to those of their biological parents.
Looking for concordance rates between biological parents and the child who is adopted
Strength of adoption study
control the enviroment as a confounding variable unlike twin studys (internal validity)
A strength is that adoption studies control for the environment as a confounding variable
in twins studies the environment can affect both MZ and DZ twins this reduces those confounding variables so we can establish cause and effect more effectively this means it has an high internal validity
A weakness of the adoption studies
generalisability (adopted dont know bio parents)
low Generalisability because not many adopted people know their biological parents so there is a smaller sample size
this means it is harder to generalise the results to the general population and reducing who the results can be generalised too
Strength of adoption studys
Ethics (concent of adopted/bio parents)
Children cannot consent to be studied but adoption studies usually proceed with the presumptive consent of the adoptive parents and where possible the biological parents too the children’s anonymity is preserved and this respect their privacy indignity fuss meaning it is highly ethical
Weakness of adoption studys
A weakness of adoption studies
is that the adopted environment may be extremely similar to the biological environment and therefore it will be much harder to establish the genetic factors from the environmental factors
because both results should be very similar and therefore cause and effect will be harder to establish
and internal validity will be low
due to it being harder for researchers to analyse the results effectively
Example of an Adoption Study
Heston 1966
How many adopted children of biological novels with schizophrenia go on to develop schizophrenia themselves
