The Father Presence Questionnaire: A New Measure of the Subjective Experience of Being Fathered

Over the past 30 years, researchers have learned much about father absence and father involvement. Most of this work, however, is based upon the viewpoint of the father himself, the mother, or the researcher/observer. In this study, we examine father presence from the adult child’s perspective. We provide a multidimensional defini-tion of father presence and a conceptual framework with which to frame its three domains: Relationship with the Father, Beliefs about the Father, and Intergenerational Family Influences. We then describe the Father Presence Questionnaire (FPQ), a 10-scale instrument that examines the son’s or daughter’s experience with father. We establish the construct validity of the FPQ using a variety of analytic methods with a sample of adult children (N = 608) located in four regions of the United States. In addition to extremely high reliabilities of the individual scales, we establish the factorial validity of the FPQ by means of a second-order confirma-tory factor analysis. We demonstrate the concurrent validity of the FPQ through correlations with existing measures assessing family relationships. The FPQ appears to be a theoretically grounded and reliable measure of the adult child’s perception of and experience with father. 159 An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Associ