effects of institutionalisation

A limitation – Romanian orphanages will not typical of orphanages at that time. The condition of the Romanian orphanages were extremely poor and do not represent what other orphanages and calf facilities were like. The neglect and lack a stimulation that the children experience was so bad that the findings cannot be generalised to all institutionalised care. Therefore, these findings are extremely validated for the consequences of this epidemic in Romania at the time not for other infants from other countries. However, rotters research was longitudinal which shows us the long-term and short-term effects making the findings more valid.

strength – Romanian orphan studies is that they have real life application. Romanian orphan studies helped with understanding the effects of institutionalised care and the effects on attachment. Such research has led to improvements in care e.g. care avoid having large number of carers and infants now adopted as early as one week old. Therefore findings from these studies have been very influential informing care systems to provide the quality of care for children. However, there are a lot of situational variables that could impact the generalisability of the findings from the study to other infants in care at that time reducing the validity of the findings.

limitation – Fails to consider individual differences. Some children once severely impacted as others and were able to go on have secure attachments and average IQs. it has been suggested that this could be due to being treated differently or having preferential treatment from staff. Therefore ideographic methods of investigation would provide a better insight into how institutionalisation impacted each child offering a more valid explanation

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