Adoption Study

• Adoption Studies:

  Strengths:

  • Adoption studies overcome the problem faced by twin studies, where biologically identical twins are brought up in the same household, which makes it impossible to separate out the influence of genes from environment.
  • The research design is logical. In theory, it allows us to see the relative importance of ’nature’ (the genes inherited from biological parents) versus ‘nurture’ (the adoptive family environment).
• Adoption Studies:

  Strengths (2):

  • Findings of adoption studies give some support to genetic explanations. They show adoptees were more likely to have criminal records if their biological parents had criminal records.
• Adoption Studies:

  Limitations:

  • Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that adoption studies show genes have little effect on criminality.
  • Adopted children are often placed in environments similar to those of their birth family, with families of the same class and ethnicity, in the same locality etc. Similar environments may produce similar behaviour.
  • Many children are not adopted immediately after birth but remain with their biological family for some time. This earl environment may be the true cause of their criminality.