Well, me and dh never had to do a study, but we are fostering a 3 year-old boy. His mother is one of my best friends and she has had a lot of trouble with drugs, alcohol, men and everything in between, she finally decided to get help and asked us to provide for him. Child services came and ran a background check, they checked if we would be able to take care of him and after that we could have him. So we never intended to adopt. We are thinking about it now because his mother's situation is getting worse instead of better but we will wait for at least another year because we only had Michael for a few months. Fostering is great but a lot of hard work, especially if the kid has gone through a lot, Michael was just two when we got him but you could see that he was affected by his situation. good luck
even if it seems hard it's very rewarding