ABSTRACT
Although conceptualizations of what “good” fathers do or ought to do have proliferated in the past 10 years or so, methodological and measurement issues concerning how to recruit, interview, and retain fathers in research studies have progressed at a slower pace. Past approaches to the measurement of father involvement have been characterized by at least five limitations: (1) Mothers are often used as proxy for fathers, (2) the often interchangeable use of generic fathering versus child-specific fathering, (3) the limited generalization of findings from middle-class, European American groups to other cultural groups, (4) the validity of fathers’ self-report data, and (5) the narrow or dichotomous (present/absent) definition of father involvement. However, in the past few years there have been serious and concerted efforts to improve on past methodologies.
