title: Adoptees' Curiosity and Information Seeking about Birth Parents in Emerging Adulthood: Context, Motivation, and Behavior.
abstract: The Adoption Communication Pathway(ACP) model was used to test the potential mediating effect of curiosity on adoption information seeking in a sample of 143 emerging adult adoptees (mean age = 25.0 years) who were adopted as infants within the United States by parents of the same race. Adoptees were interviewed about their intentions and actions taken to gather new information about their birth mothers and fathers. As expected, level of curiosity was positively associated with information seeking behavior. Moreover, level of curiosity was influenced by adoptees' perceptions of barriers and facilitators toward information-dseeking. In fact, curiosity partially mediated the impact of internal and external barriers on information seeking about birth mothers. Curiosity fully mediated the impact of external barriers and partially mediated external facilitators on birth father information seeking. This study provides important support for the ACP, which describes context, motivation, and behavior relating to seeking new adoption-related information.
authors.affiliation: Bethel University.
authors.forename: Gretchen Miller
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Wrobel
authors.affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst.
authors.forename: Harold D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Grotevant
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, N218 Elliott Hall, 75 E River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455, University of Minnesota.
authors.forename: Diana R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Samek
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Social Science, 1985 Buford Ave, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108.
authors.forename: Lynn
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Von Korff