<1st year research summary>
The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of adopted children's participation in activities related with adoption. To accomplish this goal, researchers collected data on the adopted children’s experience o ...
<1st year research summary>
The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of adopted children's participation in activities related with adoption. To accomplish this goal, researchers collected data on the adopted children’s experience of activity related with adoption through in-depth interviews with adoptive children and parents, and analyzed the data through qualitative case study approaches. In the data analysis, the four types of adoption-related activities are defined as cases, and the analyzes are made in the case of adopted children's and adoptive parents' perspective in each activity. The results of the study are composed of the analysis of the four adoption-related activities individually and the results of the integrative analysis. The four activities included nation-wide adopted children's camps, community-based self-help groups, group interventions, and artistic activities (choirs). For each activity, the perspective of adoptive parents was compared with the perspective of adoptive children. In addition, the level of analysis is composed of basic factors such as input, process, outcome (change and meaning) according to the logic model framework that is mainly used in program evaluation. The topics emerged from between-case, integrative analysis are as follows: 'stimulating thought about adoption', 'forming a network of adopted children', 'forming an identity as an adopted child', 'growth and maturity', 'take a point in everyday life: fun, joy and rest’. Based on the results, the practical guidelines should be considered when planning activities to help the adoptive child grow and develop are presented.
<2nd year research summary>
① Characteristics of subject
In this study, a total of 75 families and 115 adopted children participated in the survey. The characteristics of the participants were as follows. First, 42 (36.5%) adoptive boys and 73 (63.5%) adoptive girls showed that the number of adopted children was much higher than that of boys. The age of adoptive children ranged from at least 91 to 227 months, with an average age of 174.39 months (14.5 years). In detail, the age distribution is as follows: 3 persons (2.6%) were between 5 and 9 years old, 19 (16.5%) were between 9 and 12 years old, and 43 (37.4%) were between 12 and 15 years old. 50 persons (43.5%) were between 15 and 18 years old. On the other hand, the education level of adoptive children was 5 (4.3%) in elementary school, 24 (20.9%) in elementary school, 78 (67.9%) in junior high and above, and 8 (6.9%) were not in school. Among the adoptive children, 9 (7.8%) had disabilities. The adoption age ranged from 0 to 84 months at the time of adoption. The average age at adoption was 8.99 months. The adoption rate of infants within the first 12 months was 90.3% (78.3%), and the rate of older adoptees was 25.7% (21.7%) .
The characteristics of adoptive parents and adoptees were as follows: The adoption age of adoptive fathers ranged from at least 44 to at most 64, with an average of 53.83. Adoption age of adoptive mothers ranged from 39 to 61 years, and the mean age was 51.11 years. The educational level of the adoptive fathers was the highest with 37.3% of university graduates, 36.0% of graduate students, 24.0% of high school graduates, and 1.3% of middle and high school graduates. The educational level of adoptive mothers was 53.3% of college graduates, 25.3% of high school graduates, 17.3% of graduate school graduates, 2.7% of middle school graduates and 1.3% of middle school graduates. The percentage of self-employed (24.0%) was the highest in the adoptive father, followed by office workers (17.3%), clergy (16.0%), professionals (12.0%) and technical workers (10.7%). On the other hand, there are a few limitations to the distribution of adoptive mother's occupations. The ratio of self-employed (14.7%) was the highest, followed by professional (13.3%) and white-collar (10.7%).
On the other hand, the general characteristics of adopting families are as follows: adoption from parent with other children was 66.7%, and infertile adoption was 33.3%. Adoption parents had an average of 24.48 years of marriage, with at least 14 years and up to 41 years of marriage. 38.7% of the respondents were middle-class, 36.0% were middle and low, and 21.3% were middle and high, high level were 2.7% and low level were 1.3%. The monthly average income of households participating in the research was about 5,180,000 won, the minimum value was 1,500,000 won, and the maximum value was 15,000,000 won.
② Self concept
First, statistical analysis was conducted for the longitudinal comparison, although it was somewhat unreasonable to verify statistically because the number of adopted children in elementary school and lower grades (20) was small. The self-concept of the lower-grade elementary school children ranged from 44.42 to 53.86, and the total score of the self-concept of the adopted child and the score of each sub-element showed no statistically significant difference from the score of the lower elementary school.
Second, the total score of the self concept of elementary and high school adopted children did not show statistically significant difference from the non-adopted elementary school students. In addition, it was statistically significantly higher in the linguistic self, emotional self, and friend self sub-domains, but was significantly lower in the parental self than in the non-adopted.
The self-concept of adoptive adolescents in middle and high school was significantly higher than the self-concept of non-adoptive adolescents in middle and high school. Among the sub-factors, the academic self, emotional self, moral self, and friendship self of middle and high school adoptees were statistically significantly higher than non-adopted middle and high school students.
③ Academic achievement
In comparison of adoptive parents' perceptions about overall achievement in the past semester, adoptive parents were more aware than adoptive children. In terms of subjects, adoptive parents and adoptive children perceived the highest achievement in Korean language, parents perceived mathematics and science, and children as having the lowest achievement in mathematics. In addition, parents of elementary school upper and middle and high school students perceived higher academic achievement than children.
Compared with the comparative group (2013), the adoptive children in all subjects were less aware of their academic achievement than the comparative group. Especially, in the case of mathematics, respectively. Differences according to gender showed that adoptive girls perceived their academic achievement to be lower than the comparative group in terms of overall academic achievement. In particular, adoptive girls perceived their academic achievement as lower in Korean language, mathematics, social science, and science than the comparative group. On the other hand, adoptive boys did not have a significant difference in overall academic performance from the comparative group, but in the mathematics class, they were perceived to be lower than the comparative group. On the other hand, the adoptive children of the upper grades of elementary school showed no difference in the academic achievement to comparison group. On the other hand, in the case of adoptive adolescents in middle and high school, they perceived that overall academic achievement was significantly lower than the comparative group, and the difference was statistically significant in mathematics and science subjects.
This shows that adoptive girls are more likely to experience difficulties in Korean language, mathematics, social science, and science subjects than general children, and there is no problem in adoptive children in elementary school. And then, It is highly likely that they will experience it during their adolescent period.
④ Peer relationship
As a result of looking into the relationship of adoptive children by the fourth grade or higher in elementary school in order to comprehensively evaluate the problems experienced by the adoptive child in their daily life, The results of this analysis are as follows. According to the standard T score, 14.3% of the children showed a high degree of difficulty (8.6%) or very high (5.7%) in the problem of peer relationship. In terms of sub-domains, frequency of problematic levels was relatively high in the areas of apathy, social suppression, hyperactivity, and self-sacrifice. This means that adoptive children may find it difficult to feel intimacy or affection with other friends in a friendship relationship, to maintain a positive relationship for a long time, to talk to friends, to express their emotions, to participate in groups. They also do not make self-assertion because they think that if someone claims to be overly pleased with another person and overreacts to others, he/she will try to avoid letting others down, Which means that there is a high possibility of exhibiting characteristics that can not be drawn.
⑤ Problem behavior
The problem behaviors of adoptive children were divided into elementary adoptive girls, elementary adoptive boys, middle and high school adoptive boys, and middle and high school adoptive girls. In the case of elementary adopted girls, the subscales of depression/depression and somatic symptom subscales differed from the normative group, and both subscales were lower than the normative group. In addition, in the case of the total scale, the problem of internalization was significantly lower than that of the normative group. In the DSM scale, emotional and somatization problems were significantly lower than normative groups. Overall, the level of problem behaviors of elementary school adoptees is lower or not significantly different from that of normative groups. The number of children in the clinical group was also lower than that of the normative group.
In the case of elementary school adopted children, there were no significant differences in the symptom subscales, total scales, and DSM scales with the standard group, but the proportion of children in the clinical group was somewhat higher than that of the standard group, It is considered to be due to small size.
In the meanwhile, the problem behaviors of middle and high school adopted girls showed that higher level of problem behaviors including social immaturity, norm violations, and other problems than the standard group, but did not show any significant difference in total scale. In terms of the DSM scale, adopted adolescents showed a higher level of problem behaviors than the norm group in the behavior problem. Also, the number of children in the clinical group exceeded 10% in total problem behavior scale, externalization problem, and other problems.
The problem behaviors of the middle and high school adoptive boys were significantly higher than those of the normative group in the rule violation among the symptom subscales, but they did not find any significant difference in the total scale from the normative group. In the DSM scale, emotional problems were significantly lower than normative, whereas behavioral problems were higher than normative. In addition, the number of children in the clinical group exceeded 10% in total problem behavior scale, externalization problem, internalization problem, rule violation, and DSM behavior problem.
This suggests that the level of problem behaviors of adopted children in elementary school is lower or not significantly different from that of the normative group, and that some of the subscales and DSM scales show more problematic behavior than the normative group when they are middle and high school students.