Measuring Father Involvement Within Low-Income Families: Who is a Reliable and Valid Reporter?

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This study assesses and compares the internal reliability and predictive validity of fathers’ versus mothers’ reports of father involvement. Design. Two hundred and twenty-seven fathers and mothers reported separately on 6 identical items regarding father involvement with a designated focal child. Mothers reported on their own parenting and child demographic characteristics. Direct assessments assessed child cognitive skills. Results. Reliable composites of father involvement were similar across father versus mother reports and across resident versus nonresident and African American versus Latin American fathers. Father reports and a combined reporter composite predicted children's reading and math skills; mother reports showed significant relations to only to children's math skills. Conclusions. Simple surveys that include either father or mother reports of father involvement can be used to create reliable father involvement measures. Father reports of father involvement showed more consistent predictive validity than mother reports of father involvement. Further measurement development and assessment are needed for more comprehensive measures of fathers’ involvement and contributions to children's well-being.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Initial findings of this study were presented at 2003 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa, Florida. This research was supported by the Boston College Minority Fellowship and by the Ford Foundation Research and Training Program on Poverty and Public Policy at the University of Michigan to the first author, and a grant to the second author from the National Institutes of Health (HD042073–01A1). Funding for Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study was provided by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation, Administration on Developmental Disabilities, Administration for Children and Families, Social Security Administration, National Institute of Mental Health, The Boston Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Kronkosky Charitable Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Searle Fund for Policy Research, and Woods Fund of Chicago. A special thank you is also extended to the families who participated in the Three-City Study.

Notes

Item 3: “How often does [father] see or visit with the child” was reported on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = every few months, 3 = once a month or more, 4 = once a week, 5 = almost every day, 6 = father lived with child). Scales were recoded (1 = never, 2 through 3 = a little, 4 = some, 5 through 6 = a lot). Item 4: “How often does the child see or visit with [father’s] family” was reported on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = usually, 5 = always). Scales were recoded (1 = never, 2 through 3 = a little, 4 = some, 5 = a lot. Item 5: “How many hours per week does [father] take care of child” was reported as a continuous variable ranging from 0 to168. Scales were recoded for fathers and mothers (1 = 0 hours, 2 = .46 to 9 hours, 3 = 10 to 20 hours, 4 = 21 to 168 hours).

When multiple group comparisons were performed by race and residential status, the case:parameter ratio became less than 10:1. In three comparison models (resident fathers vs. resident mothers, Latin American fathers vs. African American fathers, Latin American mothers vs. African American mothers) variance estimates were negative suggesting the sample is too small for such a complex model (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1984).To prevent negative variance estimates, models were simplified by setting some covariance parameter estimates to 0.