Measures
See MTARP
Procedures & Measures for a detailed description of each measure and the
coding process.
Wave 1: Adoptive Parent Measures:
- Demographic questionnaire
- Adoptive Parent Interview
- Child Adaptive Behavior Inventory (CABI: Miller, 1987)
- Kirk Adoption Questionnaire (Kirk, 1981)
- Parenting Stress Index (PSI: Abidin, 1986)
- Twenty Statements Test (TST: Kuhn & McPartland, 1954)
Wave 1: Adopted Child Measures:
- Child Interview
- Understanding of Adoption Scale (Brodzinsky, Singer, & Braff, 1984)
- Self-Perception Scale for Children (Harter, 1985)
- Twenty Statements Test (see above)
Wave 1: Birthmother Measures
- Demographic Questionnaire
- Birthmother Interview
- Ego Identity Interview (Grotevant & Cooper, 1981)
- Health Checklist (Pennebaker, 1986)
- Intimacy Interview (White, Speisman, Costos, Kelly, & Bartis, 1984)
- Self-Perception Profile for Adults (Messer & Harter, 1986)
- Twenty Statements Test (see above)
Wave 2: Adoptive Parent Measures
- Adoptive Parent Interview
- Agency Questionnaire
- Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI: Derogatis, 1993)
- Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: Achenbach 1991a)
- Demographic Questionnaire
- Family Assessment Device (FAD: Espstein, Baldwin, & Bishop, 1985)
- Family Inventory of Life Events and Changes (FILE: McCubbin, Patterson, & Wilson, 1981)
- NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R: Costa & McCrae, 1993)
- Parenting Stress Inventory (see above)
- Psychological Parenting Questionnaire (Henney, 1995)
Wave 2: Adopted Adolescent Measures
- Adopted Adolescent Interview
- Adopted Adolescent Interview: Identity Coding
- Adolescent Interview: Discrete Coding
- Adolescent Interview: Openness Coding
- Adoption Dynamics Questionnaire (ADQ: Benson, Sharma, & Roehlkepartain, 1994)
- Brief Symptom Inventory (see above)
- Demographic Questionnaire
- Family Assessment Device (see above)
- Personal Experience Screening Questionnaire (PESQ: Winters, 1991)
- Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA: Armsden & Greenberg, 1986)
- Youth Self Report (Achenbach, 1991b)
Wave 2: Family Interaction Task
Both adoptive parents and the adopted target adolescent participated in a 20-minute audiotaped family interaction task, in which the family was told they have unlimited funds and 2 weeks to plan a vacation together. They are asked to decide where they would go and what they would do each day. This task was successfully used in the researcher’s earlier work (Family Process Project: Grotevant & Cooper, 1985, 1986) with a demographically-similar sample of non-adoptive families. Interactions were transcribed verbatim and coded for individuality and connectedness, using the Individuality and Connectedness Q-sort (Bengtson & Grotevant, 1999).
Wave 2: School Records
Adolescents and their parents were asked permission for us to contact the adolescents’ schools for their grades from as many years as possible, standardized test scores, class rank, and records concerning special education and gifted and talented programming. This information forms a unique longitudinal data set based on archival records rather than self report.
Wave 2: Birthmother Measures
- Birthmother Interview and Demographic Questionnaire
- Brief Symptom Inventory (see above)
- Ego Identity Interview
- ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale (Fowers & Olsen, 1993)
- Family Inventory of Life Events and Changes (see above)
- Grief Experience Inventory-Loss Version (Sanders, Mauger, & Strong, 1985)
- Harter Self-Perception Profile for Adults (Messer & Harter, 1987)
- Health Checklist (see above)
- Intimacy Interview
- Life History Calendar (Freedman, Thorton, Camburn, Alwin, & Young-Demarco, 1986)
- NEO Personality Inventory (see above)
- Openness Checklist
- Twenty Statements Test (see above)