Adoption studies

Question 1

what do adoption studies compare?

Answer 1

compare adopted children to both their biological and adopted parents

Question 2

how does adoption studies link to criminality?

Answer 2

adopted children share environment of adoptive parents but genes of biological so if behaviour of the child is more like their biological parents this would support a genetic explanation

Question 3

who did studies for adoption studies?

Answer 3

Mednick et al

Question 4

when, where and how many people did Mednick et al study?

Answer 4

1924-1947
Denmark
14,000 adopted sons

Question 5

what did Mednick et al find?
adoption studies

Answer 5

sons were more likely to have a criminal record if a birth parent also had a criminal record (concordance rate of 20%) - this supports a genetic explanation
by contrast they found that a smaller proportion (14.7%) had a criminal record if adoptive parents had one