ABSTRACT
Researchers interested in father involvement have focused on the relationships between parents and their younger children (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997; Lamb, 1997; Marsiglio, Day, Amato, & Lamb, 2000). Whereas the research on father involvement has blossomed in recent years, the focus on father involvement with regard to adolescent children is still in its infancy (Hosley & Montemayor, 1997). The purpose of this chapter is to explore an important measurement issue that is relatively underresearched. How can we assess teen’s perceptions of family processes (social capital) and role performance of fathers compared to mothers? We show that researchers can use existing large national data sets to assess this important construct and specifically explain how to use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-97 to gather important information about teen-father relationships,
In particular, we compare how fathers are viewed differently by their children as a function of family status, focusing on biological and nonbiological fathers and whether they resident in the same home as the reporting child. We also examine differences in the perceptions across racial/ethnic groups and by the gender of the youth.
