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Home > How Many Children Were Adopted in 2000 and 2001? > How Many Children Were Adopted in 2000 and 2001?: 3. Methodology
How Many Children Were Adopted in 2000 and 2001?
Numbers and Trends
Author(s): Child Welfare Information Gateway
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| Year Published: 2004 |
3. Methodology
Through the Court Statistics Project, NCSC verified basic information from child welfare agencies, State courts, and bureaus of vital records in each State to estimate the total number of adoptions in the United States for the years 2000 and 2001. This total includes public agency adoptions (adoptions completed by public agencies or adoptions by private agencies under contract with public agencies), private agency adoptions, adoptions without any agency involvement, tribal adoptions, and intercountry adoptions. The Court Statistics Project also requested information about the number of children adopted by related persons, unrelated persons, stepparents, and foster parents.
Information about total adoptions was gathered in four phases:
- Contact public adoption agencies. To obtain information about private agency adoptions and adoptions not accomplished through any agency, project staff first contacted public adoption agencies with a request for contact information for private agencies and others who might be potential sources of adoption information. Although many of the agencies were able to give the project contact information for adoption specialists within the States, few were able to offer any comprehensive statistics on adoptions within their States. More than 65 agencies were contacted at this stage of the project.
- Conduct follow-up. A second round of requests for adoption numbers targeted 40 public agencies. Responses tended to reiterate the AFCARS and public agency data already acquired. Private agency contacts were more likely to be aware of the status of adoption statistics in the State. Most sources were certain that no comprehensive information on adoption numbers was being collected at all. These sources further agreed that such information would be extremely beneficial.
- Contact private agencies. The third round of information requests was conducted using a comprehensive list of all the private adoption agencies in each State. More than 200 private agencies were contacted regarding statistics on the total number of adoptions. No agency was able or willing to produce total number of adoptions completed by that agency or comprehensive data about all private adoptions.
- Contact bureaus of vital records. Project staff contacted the vital records offices in each State to determine the number of amended birth certificates, from which the total number of adoptions could be inferred. Information was gathered from 28 vital records offices. Eighteen States provided numbers to the project, while 10 States reported that they do not record the number of amended birth certificates. Many States made the disclaimer that their numbers were slightly inaccurate because they probably included adoptions completed in previous years instead of those completed only in 2000 and 2001.
This material may be freely reproduced and distributed. However, when doing so, please credit Child Welfare Information Gateway.
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