EPA-0876 - Quality of Relationships of Adults with Experience of Institutional and Family Care in Childhood

Abstract

The quantitative study deals with the quality of relationships of adults with experience of institutional care during their childhood and compares it to that of adults raised exclusively in original families. The research objective is to describe how the individuals being observed perform in interpersonal relationships and to compare the results obtained from the experimental and control group.

The experimental group (n = 127) consists of individuals of 18 and older who had been, by the age of 10, placed for at least a year into a facility providing some kind of institutional education (for instance, infant and children's homes). The control group (n =104) consists of individuals of a similar age from a regular population.

Following standardized psychodiagnostic tools had been used within the study: Rohner's method of family diagnostics, Adult Attachment Scale and UCLA Loneliness Scale. Further information had been obtained through anamnestic questionnaire, containing also questions on the primary as well as the current respondent's relationships. The data had been gathered groupwise.

The study concludes a difference in quality of the relationships in the experimental and control groups. However, due to an inherent complexity of the area of human relationships, the results of selected tests exhibit rather low correlation. Some of the study's aspects are, more than others, influenced by experience with institutional care. Differences were also observed with respect to varying duration of the stay, subjectively perceived quality of the education and gender.