Adoption studies

• Theory summary: comparing adopted children's level of criminality with their biological and adopted parents
• Limitation: Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that adoption studies show genes have little effect on criminality.
• Limitation: Adoptive children are usually placed in a similar environment to their birth parents.
• Limitation: Many children don't go straight into an adoptive family and they stay with their birth parents for sometime which could lead to them adopting things from their environment.
• Strength: The theory overcomes the problems faced in twin studies where twins share an environment making it impossible to separate them.
• Strength: The design of the theory is logical - with a nature vs nurture study.
• Strength: The theory gives more support to genetic explanations.