. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Apr 1.

Published in final edited form as: Child Abuse Negl. 2015 Jan 28;42:99–111. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2015.01.003

Table 2.

Possible explanations for less instability in kinship foster care, implied hypotheses, and approach to testing

Possible explanation	Implied Hypothesis	Test
Child selection factors: Children who enter KC have fewer behavioral and cognitive deficits. Consequently, children in KC may be easier to foster, and thus would be less likely to have a placement change irrespective of where they were placed.	Given similar children, children in NRFC and KC would have similar risks of a placement move. That is, the stability gap would be smaller for the higher risk children than for all children.	Compare the difference between NRFC and KC in risk of a placement move for all children vs. higher-risk subgroups of children
Foster parent commitment: Kinship foster parents may be more committed to child, feel a greater sense of obligation to maintain placement irrespective of any personal or economic hardships. In addition, if they had a pre-existing bond with the child, kinship foster parents may be less likely to evoke, or more likely to tolerate, problematic behaviors or temperaments.	Children in KC would be less likely to be moved at the request of a foster parent than children in NRFC. The stability gap would be predominantly driven by fewer foster parent-requested moves in KC.	Compare the difference between NRFC and KC in risk of a placement move for foster-parent requested moves vs. moves that occur for any other reason.
Policy preferences and priorities: Placement of removed children with kin is an explicit priority for the child welfare system. Consequently, children in NRFC may be intentionally moved to facilitate a KC placement, even if there were no inherent flaws of the NRFC placement. Notably, there is no comparable scenario in KC.	The stability gap is largely driven by the movement of children in NRFC into placements given more preference in policy, including KC.	Compare NRFC to KC on the risks of a move to (1) a more-preferred placement, (2) an equally-preferred placement, and (3) a less-preferred placement.