For adopted individuals, understanding the role of birth family is an important part of developing a coherent life narrative. However, there is limited empirical research on this aspect of the adoption experience. We introduce a new construct, birth family thoughts, that captures a sense of curiosity about birth family, and describe the development of an accompanying brief self-report measure, the Birth Family Thoughts Scale (BFTS). Across 4 studies of transnationally adopted Korean American adolescents, emerging adults, and adults who were adopted before the age of 3 (ncombined = 546), we found strong support for a 1-factor structure using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Convergent validity was generally supported. The BFTS was positively related to measures of adoption- and ethnicity-related constructs, although there were a few inconsistencies between studies and measures. Discriminant validity also was generally supported. We found no evidence for the BFTS being related to a poor adoptive family situation or an indication of psychopathology. We did find some evidence of the BFTS relating to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, while the BFTS was unrelated to travel to Korea, it was correlated with visiting an orphanage in Korea. It was also related to initiating a birth family search in Study 1, but not in Studies 2 or 3. We discuss the importance of considering birth family thoughts across the life span and with other populations, as well as the limitations of the current study including sampling issues inherent in working with hard-to-reach populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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跨国采用的青少年和成年人出生家庭思想的概念化和衡量。

对于被领养的个人，了解出生家庭的作用是发展连贯的生活叙事的重要组成部分。但是，关于收养经验这一方面的经验研究有限。我们介绍了一种新的构想，即出生家庭思想，该结构捕捉了对出生家庭的好奇心，并描述了伴随的简短自我报告方法-出生家庭思想量表（BFTS）的发展。在对跨国收养的韩裔美国青少年，新兴成年人和3岁以下成年人（共546人）进行的4项研究中，我们发现使用探索性和确认性因子分析对1因子结构具有强烈支持，并且内部一致性良好和重测可靠性。聚合效度普遍得到支持。BFTS与收养和种族相关构造的度量呈正相关，尽管研究和度量之间存在一些不一致之处。一般也支持判别效度。我们发现没有证据表明BFTS与收养的家庭状况差或心理病理迹象有关。我们确实找到了一些与内在和外在症状有关的BFTS证据。此外，虽然BFTS与去韩国旅行无关，但与去韩国孤儿院有关。这也与在研究1中启动出生家庭搜索有关，但在研究2或3中却没有。我们讨论了在整个生命周期内以及与其他人群一起考虑出生家庭思想的重要性，以及当前研究的局限性，包括与难以到达的人群合作时固有的抽样问题。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。