Research study on White adoptive parents of Asian children

[Anonymous]

Are you a White adoptive parent of an Asian child or children? Your help is needed for a research study about adoptive families!

You can provide researchers with valuable information that will help advance understanding regarding transracial adoptive families. This knowledge can eventually be used to help adoptive families.

My name is Maria Luz Berbery and I am a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. I am working with Dr. Karen O’Brien in conducting a research study on White adoptive parents of Asian children. We want to learn more about your experiences raising a child from a country of origin and race that are different from your own. Our study involves a one-time survey that is completed online in about 20 minutes. Your responses will be confidential, and although you will receive no direct benefits, your participation will help researchers understand more about international adoptive families. Please note that only one parent from each family may participate because parents in a couple may respond similarly, and we only want one set of responses for every family. This research has been approved by the University of Maryland, College Park IRB for research involving human participants.

Please visit the following link if you are interested in participating. You will be taken to a website that gives a description of the study. You will also be able to view the informed consent form before you decide if you would like to participate.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=PcIqy6Gsr_2bmLUjjwe7uwDw_3d_3d

Contact Information:
Dr. Karen O’Brien, Professor
University of Maryland Department of Psychology
1147 Biology-Psychology Building
College Park, MD 20782
[e-mail]
301-405-5812

Maria Luz Berbery, Doctoral Student
University of Maryland Department of Psychology
1147 Biology-Psychology Building
College Park, MD 20742
[e-mail]

[Anonymous]

The survey linked seems to only be about black-white relations and attitudes and nothing about parenting an Asian child. Is there a mistake?

[Anonymous]

I noticed the same thing. I just figured it was going to compare our attitudes towards AA with those towards our Asian daughters, to see how inconsistent one is in relations with various ethnic groups or awareness.

[Anonymous]

I emailed the person who is in charge of the study a couple of days ago and got no response. If she responds I will post again. But
Not sure why someone would post something like this right before going out of town on vacation or for some other reason not
responding.

I don't intend to answer the survey unless I can get a response. And I found it about black white relations exclusively and rather offensive.
Nothing subtle in the questioning.

Anyway I think after seeing just the first 2 questions before I quit the survey, I would want to find out what exactly this survey
is trying to find out and why is it asking for white parents of Asian children but then focuses on blacks.

I recommend don't waste your time unless the original poster can explain what the deal is.

[Anonymous]

Survey monkey. Anonymous DCUM sample.

Love the methodological rigour.

[Anonymous]

response from the survey poster:

We would be very happy to share our findings with parents. We could share/post our preliminary findings and then the article that we plan to write for publication.

I am forwarding this to my graduate student, Maria Berbery, so she can work with you to ensure that our results are posted. She also will work with you to connect with the listserves that you mentioned. Thank you so much for taking the time to contact me with your idea. It was very helpful.

Karen

Karen M. O'Brien, Ph.D.
Professor,
Department of Psychology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
[phone]
fax [phone]

[Anonymous]

survey about black and white people

not related directly to adoption asia/white families

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I noticed the same thing. I just figured it was going to compare our attitudes towards AA with those towards our Asian daughters, to see how inconsistent one is in relations with various ethnic groups or awareness.

I read some of the survey. invites to participate are also on an international adoption website. Anyone can complete the survey on-line so how do they know if participants are really parents of an adopted Asian child? All the questions were targeting AA . I guess the survey is about why people would adopt a baby from Asia and not an AA baby or child born in the USA. What about children born in Africa? Racial and ethnic long term identifications?

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2366972

[Anonymous]

This sounds strange. Would survey monkey really pass an IRB approval as an appropriate collection method?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone, I am Maria Berbery, the graduate student that posted the link. I'm sorry I had not seen your responses earlier, but I would like to address your concerns if I can. There is only one section of the survey that is about Black/White relations, and this is because we are interested in how racial identity relates to socialization behaviors of adoptive parents of Asian children. The rest of the questions relate more directly to parents' relationships with their Asian children. There is no easy way to get a representative sample of White parents of Asian children, but we are recruiting participants directly from adoption agencies and organizations in addition to adoption websites and forums. Survey Monkey is routinely used within psychology research as a data collection method. I am sorry if the questions offended some parents, of course no one is obligated to participate and you may quit the survey at any time.