Survey of Holt Adoptees and Their Families, 2005

This study, conducted January 2004 to June 2006, was
undertaken to assess the health status, educational attainment, and
income of adult Korean-American adoptees and their adoptive families.
The study focused on families who adopted a Korean-American child
through Holt International Children's Services from 1970 to 1980. The
principal investigator hoped to identify the effects of large-scale
changes in family environment on children's outcomes using data on
adults who were adopted in infancy. Korean-American adoptees placed
through Holt International Children's Services had been quasi-randomly
assigned to these families in infancy using a queuing (first-come,
first-served) policy. One adoptive parent from each family was
surveyed, as well as a small subset of adult adoptees, and each case
represented an adopted or non-adopted child in the family. Adoptive
parents were asked to give their age, sex, marital status, occupation,
education level, household income, height, weight, tobacco and alcohol
usage, and the number of children they had. Adoptive parents also
gave information on their adopted and non-adopted children's age, sex,
marital status, education level, income, weight, height, undergraduate
institution, number of children, and whether their children smoked,
drank alcohol, or had asthma. For adopted children, parents gave the
arrival age of the child and whether the child was adopted through
Holt International. Adoptive parents also indicated whether they were
aware of and had used services such as workshops and referral services
offered by Holt. Since the survey relied on parent reports of their
adult children's outcomes, surveys were also sent to a small subset of
adoptees. Their surveys included the same questions asked of their
adoptive parents, as well as the adoptee's value of assets, religion,
and frequency of religious attendance. The study also contained
information on adoptees' birth parents obtained from Holt
International's administrative records and constructed variables that
analyzed household composition, population characteristics, and the
education and health status of the adoptive family.