Culture Camp, Ethnic Identity, and Adoption Socialization for Korean Adoptees: A Pretest and Posttest Study

This study explores the impact of racial-ethnic socialization on adopted South Korean children and adolescents who attended a sleepaway Korean culture camp for one week. This camp provided racial-ethnic socialization experiences via exposure to camp counselors, staff, and teachers who were Korean Americans, Korean nationals, and Korean adult adoptees, and exposure to cultural activities and discussions. Using a pretest-posttest design to control for the lack of a comparison group (McCall & Green, ), 75 Korean adoptee children and adolescents (mean age = 12.96) completed both the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) surveys at pretest and posttest, and completed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) at posttest. Results indicated that adoptees reported lower levels of depression at the end of camp than at the beginning of camp, but little variance could be attributed to ethnic identity at posttest. The results of this study suggest that scholars investigate the possibility that adoptee culture camps may provide an adoption socialization experience that may be more salient for adoptees than the racial-ethnic socialization that was intended. Implications for research and practice are discussed.