The Inventory of Father Involvement: A Pilot Study of a New Measure of Father Involvement

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 (Hawkins & Palkovitz, 1999). 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). Fathers (N = 723) reported on “how good a job” they were doing on the 43 indicators of father involvement. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded nine relatively distinct first-order factors, indicating a single, global second-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.