Adoption studies

Question 1

what do adoption studies involve

Answer 1

looking at an individual and their genetically related relatives in comparison to adoptive relatives who are genetically different but share the same environment

Question 2

what does it show if concordance is greater in adoptive relatives

Answer 2

environmental factors are more important in disease causation

Question 3

what does it show if concordance is higher in genetically related relatives than in adoptive relatives

Answer 3

suggests genetic factors are more important in disease causation

Question 4

adoption studies are useful for separating genes from the environment means we can assume that…

Answer 4

similarities between a biological parent and child are due to genetic similarities

Question 5

adoption studies are useful as they allow trends in behaviour to be studies because they…

Answer 5

tend to use longitudinal methods (follow the same group of children over long periods)

and allows trends in behaviour to be studied which can then be linked to genetic influences

Question 6

why do they lack generalisability

Answer 6

only certain types of families accepted as adopters

less representative as adopting families are likely to be similar to one another

Question 7

what validity issues do they have

Answer 7

may overemphasise the role of genes

adopting environment may be similar to the environment of birth parents

children tend to be placed in families similar to their own