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Father involvement is critical to a child's long-term growth and development. Increased positive father involvement and engagement will create greater opportunities for fathers to make a significant contribution to their children's healthy growth and development. Fathers vary in expectations about their roles and the goals they have set for parenting and child development activities. These varying expectations need to be considered and responded to as efforts are made to support a range of father involvement opportunities. This tool has been developed, pilot-tested and used by several…
This chapter highlights the Developing a Daddy Survey (DADS) project, a project to increase the comparability of measures across surveys in order to generate better information about father involvement and serve as guide for future research on father involvement. It discusses the limitations of past approaches to the measurement of father involvement, describes projects that are part of DADS, provides an overview of the methodological challenges faced in collecting data on father involvement in the DADS studies that focus on being a father, and how these studies have overcome these…
Nonprofits today are being pressed to demonstrate the effectiveness of their program activities by initiating and completing outcome-oriented evaluation of projects. This guide was developed to provide practical assistance to nonprofits engaged in this process. In the pages of this guide, staff of nonprofits and community members alike are given orientation to the underlying principles of "logic modeling" to use this tool to enhance their program planning, implementation, and dissemination activities. The Guide contains four chapters and two comprehensive appendices. Chapter 1 presents a…
This chapter shows how conceptualization of father involvement can affect the design of intervention programs for adjudicated youth. A study involving 78 fathers of at-risk adolescents found fathers who reported using a greater number of past services for their adolescents were more likely to participate in family-based programs, as were fathers who reported poorer family problem-solving abilities, and fathers of adolescents with more severe behavior problems. A follow-up quantitative study of 20 fathers of at-risk adolescents found views on traditional family roles and feelings of inadequacy…
This chapter uses data from the Fragile Families Study to examine parental involvement by 2,776 unmarried fathers around the time of the child's birth. Findings indicate the father's ability to fulfill the provider role--demonstrated by his higher education, being employed, or higher wages--was linked to positive outcomes. Fathers who were employed were more likely to provide material support during the pregnancy and to visit the mother in the hospital; however, a father's hourly wage rate was the only significant economic characteristic predicting whether the father's name was on the…
This study analyses the ways in which intervention programs can evaluate their impact on father involvement using the Fathering Indicators Framework (FIF). It describes the conceptual and methodological issues involved in developing a framework that can address the specific needs of diverse groups of fathers, and the design and development of the FIF. A field study with fathering and family practitioners (n=36) highlights the complexities that may arise in implementing the framework in programs. 16 tables and 31 references. (Author abstract modified)
This chapter describes the theoretical foundations of the Positive Paternal Emotional Responsiveness (PPER) subscale of the Fatherhood Scale, which was designed to assess the childhood paternal bonds of adults. The PPER contains 13 questions that focus on the role of the father in the development of a healthy perception of self. Clients are asked to rate their experience with their father as a caring person and the frequency of paternal expressions of praise and love. The results can be used to identify areas for further exploration in therapy, such as strengths in the relationship between…
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The purpose of the evaluation was to answer the question: What is the impact of an indirect intervention program revolving around issues of father/male involvement in early childhood programs designed to provide support services for staff members on the proportion of "parent involvement contacts" and activities that include fathers/men? (McBride, Rane, and Bae, 2000, p. 79). This program evaluation design included a comparison pre-kindergarten program with a post-test, surveys, and attitudinal instruments. (Author abstract)
