Romanian Orphan Studies

• •Institutionalisation refers to the effects of living in an institutional setting (i.e. outside of the family or family home) e.g. hospital, orphanage, where children live for long, continuous periods of time. There is often very little emotional care provided.
• Institutional care=

  No attachment figure

  Bored

  Not cared for well

  Less sociable and interactions

  Fewer toys
• Family care=

  Strong emotional attachment

  Well stimulated

  Cared for well

  Lots of socialising and interactions

  More toys
• Orphan Studies


  •Orphan studies concern children placed in care. An orphan is a child whose parents have either died or abandoned them.•A tragic opportunity to study institutionalisation arose in Romania in the 1990s. Former President Nicolai Ceaucescu required Romanian women to have five children. Many Romanian parents could not afford to keep their children and so they ended up in huge orphanages in very poor conditions.•After the 1989 revolution, many of the children were adopted, some by British parents.
• Conclusion


  •The study suggests that the long-term consequences may be less severe than was once thought if children have the opportunity to form attachments. However, when children do not form attachments, then the consequences are likely to be severe.
• Conclusion


  It appears that children can recover and it may be slower development rather than irreversible damage.
• Eval=Applicable 2 Real Life Situations


  •Such results have led to improvements in the way children are cared for. For example, orphanages and children’s homes now avoid having large numbers of caregivers for each child and instead ensure that a much smaller number of people, perhaps only one or two, play a central role for the child. This person is called a key worker. Having a key worker means that the children have the chance to develop normal attachments and helps avoid disinhibited attachment
• Eval=Applicable 2 Real Life Situations

  •Studying the Romanian orphans has enhanced our understanding of the effects of institutionalisation.•supporting its external validity.
• Ao3 – some control of confounding variables

  •Many orphan studies involved children who had experienced loss or trauma before they were institutionalised. For example, they may have experience neglect, abuse or bereavement. These children were often traumatised by their experiences and suffered bereavement. It was very hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation in isolation because the children were dealing with multiple factors which functioned as confounding participant variables.
• Ao3 – some control of confounding variables

  •However, this was not the case for Romanian Orphans…it has been possible to study institutionalisation without these confounding variables, which means that findings have increased internal validity. Therefore, we can be more confident in the conclusions of the effects of institutionalisation.
• Ao3 – external validity?

  •It is possible that the conditions were so bad that the results cannot be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care or any situation where children experience deprivation. For example, Romanian orphanages had particularly poor standards of care, especially when it came to forming any relationship with the children, and extremely low levels of intellectual stimulation
• Ao3 – external validity?

  •The unusual situational variables mean that the study may lack external validity.
• Ao3 – allocation process?

  •The children were not randomly allocated to conditions. The researchers did not interfere with the adoption process, which may mean that the more sociable children were adopted early and so their sociability acted as a confounding variable.
• The allocation method simply refers to how the researchers decide who receives what treatment in an experiment. 
• Ao3 – allocation process?

  •This effects the internal validity of the conclusions about the effects of institutionalisation because we cannot determine cause and effect.•Counterargument: however, this makes the study more ethical as they didn’t deliberately interfere with the adoption process.
• Ao3 – effects may not be irreversible

  •One of the findings from the Romanian study was that at the last assessment, a lower number of children had disinhibited attachment. It may be that the effects of institutionalisation do disappear over time if children have good-quality emotional care. It may be that ex-institutional children need more time than normal to mature sufficiently and learn to cope with relationships
• Ao3 – effects may not be irreversible

  •The research implies that the effects may be irreversible, but this may not be true and so the conclusion may lack validity.