A strength is its' real-life application. Studying Romanian orphans had led to a better understanding of institutionalisations' effects which has led to improvements in the way children are cared for in institutions, e.g having key workers instead of multiple caregivers. This shows research has been immensely valuable in practical terms
Another strength of studying Romanian orphans is fewer extraneous variables. Many orphan studies involved children who had experienced trauma prior to being institutionalised making it hard to observe the effects of institutionalisation as there were multiple factors acting as confounding participant variables. With the Romanian orphans its' been possible to study institutionalisation without the confounding variables, increasing internal validity.
A weakness of the Romanian orphan studies is these orphanages weren't typical. It's possible that conditions were so bad that results can't be applied to understanding the impact of better quality institutional care. E.g., Romanian orphanages had poor levels of care and low levels of intellectual stimulation. This is a limitation as the unusual situational variables may, lack generalisability.
