The Inventory of Father Involvement: A Pilot Study of a NewMeasure of Father Involvement

Notes that as the study of fathering has matured in recent years, fathering scholars have recognized the need for richer, broader measures of the construct of father involvement. In an effort to create a measure sensitive to affective, cognitive, and direct and indirect behavioral components of involvement, 100 items were initially generated. Of these, 43 were selected for the Inventory of Father Involvement (IFI). 723 fathers (aged 22-59 yrs) reported on how good a job they were doing on the 43 indicators of father involvement. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded 9 relatively distinct 1st-order factors, indicating a single, global 2nd-order factor of father involvement. The final model confirms a shorter, 26-item version of the IFI that reflects a multi-dimensional concept of father involvement