Fig. 1. Map of Ghana showing the capital, Accra the area where the study site is located (Source; Marquette, Koranteng, Overa, & Bortei-Doku Aryeetey, 2002).

Fig. 2. How long it takes to adopt a child.

Fig. 3. Number of times a child is adopted in a month.

Number of children admitted into the Osu Children's Home since the Government took over from 1962 to 2002

Implies figures not known. Figures provided by the Osu Children's Home.

This table presents statistics pertaining to the number of abandoned, orphaned, abused and neglected children in institutional care (Osu Children's Home).

Number of children adopted from the Osu Children's Home from 1989 to March 2002

Source: Department of Social Welfare.

This table presents statistics on the number of adopted children from the Osu Children's Home.

The role of the Osu Children's to the adoption process (percentages in parentheses)

Chi-square (X²) = ? (fo − fe)²/fe, X² = 14.6, Df = 2 at 0.10 level of significance, N = 3. Cramer's V = v X²/N(K − 1) V = 0.70, where K is either number of rows or the number of columns, whichever is smaller. It is difficult to ascertain the strength of such associations based on the chi-square (X²) statistic due to the inherent limitations of this technique. However with the application of the Cramer's V statistical test, the results suggest some clues with regards to the strengths of such an association. For instance, the calculation of the Cramer's V based on the chi-square (X²) statistic of 14.6 at 0.10 level of significance gives a 0.70 for Cramer's V (Table 3). To guard against the interpretation of the Cramer's V test results, Argyrous (199, pp. 7319–324) notes that although there is no direct interpretation of any particular value of V between 0 (no association) and 1 (perfect association), anything below 0.1 is considered very weak. Following this observation as a guide, the Cramer's V test result (0.70) in Table 3 was considered as very strong at least for the sample population studied.