The father involvement scale: development, reliability and validity / 中华行为医学与脑科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To develop a father involvement scale and test the reliability and validity.Methods The scale was developed based on previous studies and depth interviews with more than 20 fathers.Totally 1565 families from 3 provinces were recruited.Item analysis was conducted to identify valid items.Then the construct validity of the scale was tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA & CFA).Finally the reliability and criterion validity of the scale was examined.Results The scale was consisted of 8 factors wihch were involvement attitude,activities and playing,accompany and taking care of children,attentiveness,discipline and school encouragement,economic support,protection,support mother.They explained 59.94％ of the total variance.Besides,the CFA results demonstrated a satisfactory construct validity of the scale (RMSEA =0.05,NFI =0.95,NNFI =0.96,CFI =0.97).The Cronbach(')s α coefficients of the scale was 0.897,and those of its 8 were 0.828,0.788,0.764,0.781,0.671,0.754,0.528 and 0.693 respectively.Conclusion The Father Involvement Scale with 8 factors has a good reliability and validity,demonstrating it a valid tool to measure father involvement in China.