romanian orphan studies

• Rutter's Romanian orphan study(2011)

  studies the long term effects of institutionalisation in Romanian orphans, 165 Romanian children who previously lived in institutions - 111 adopted before the age of 2 and 54 adopted by the age of 4, they were compared to 52 British children adopted by the age of 6 months and the children were tested regularly for physical, social and cognitive development at ages 4, 6, 11 and 15
• Rutter's Romanian orphan study results

  the Romanian children were behind the British children in all three aspects and classified as 'mentally retarded', by 4 most of the Romanian children who had been adopted by the age of 2 had caught up to the British children but many adopted after the age of 2 showed disinhibited attachment - doesn't prefer parents over strangers and seeks comfort and attention in anyone, they were also overly friendly towards others showing that there are long term effects of institutionalisation
• Rutter's study evaluation strength

  it used a range of measurements to access the children's behaviour including semi-structured interviews and observation which was longitudinal, this increases both the validity and reliability of the research
• Rutter's study evaluation limitation

  extraneous variables could influence results as it was difficult to get information about the quality of the care in many of the institutions so we don't know what it was like prior to the adoption, some of the institutions could have had better conditions making the experiment have low ecological validity

  
  

  there is also lack of data on adult development as only recorded up to when they were 15 so we don't really know the long term effects on institutionalisation