Colorado Adoption Project, 1976-2002

The Colorado Adoption Project (CAP), begun in 1976, is a longitudinal adoption study that examines genetic and environmental influence on behavioral development. Investigators employed a \"full\" adoption design by collecting data from the adoptive and biological parents, the adoptees and matched control parents and their children. While the entire data set includes measures from the predominantly white parents, siblings, and focal children (probands) spanning over a twenty year period, the Murray Research Archive has only acquired data on the children from the first seven years of the project and on the parents. Children were given standardized tests of mental and motor development, communication, personality, and temperament. Additional assessments included home observations, information on the physical environment, demographics, the child's birth and the Family Environment Scale. These measures were completed in the homes of the families when the children were 1, 2, 3 and 4 years old. At ages 5 and 6, the parents were surveyed by mail and phone about temperament, health, development of their child and again completed the Family Environment Scale. The Murray Archive holdings include data from the first 15 yearly waves of the study (ages 1-15). Proband and sibling data are included in all waves. Parent data and coded video data from the first 3 waves of the study (i.e., years 1, 2, and 3) are also available. Future waves of data on probands and siblings will be acquired as they become available.