ROMANIAN

• AO3:


  STRENGTH:

  • Lack of confounding variables
  • There are many orphan studies before the Romanian orphan study was published
  • IE: orphans studies during WW2
  • These children had varying degrees of trauma which means is difficult to disentangle neglect, physical abuse etc from intitusionalised care
  • However orphans from Romanian orphanage study were given up by loving parents who could not afford to keep them
  • This means the results obtained were less likely to be confounded by negative early experience (high internal validity)
• AO3:

  LIMITATION:

  • However, studying children from Romanian orphanage study may have introduced other confounding variables
  • The intitustion in which these children were living in had remarkably poor conditions in which children were receiving very little comfort
  • Therefore the results obtained may be representing the effects of living in a poor intuition care rather than instulisation care
• LIMITATION:

  • current lack of data on adult development.
  • latest data from the ERA Study looked at the children in their early to mid 20s
  • We do not currently have data to answer some of the most interesting research questions about the long-term effects of early institutional care
  • Questions include the lifetime prevalence of mental health problems
  • It will take a long time to gather this data because of the longitudinal design of the study, i.e. the same pp are followed over a long period