Abstract:

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale which determines father involvement of fathers having children aged between 3 and 6. The participants of the study were 350 fathers who had preschool children. Participating fathers at the age of 36.4 (SD=4.9). In the first stage after reviewing the scales that evaluated father involvement in our country and abroad, some of the items of the scale developed in present study were collected directly or by changing, and some of the items were developed by the researchers. Thus, an item pool consisting of 79 items was generated. All of the items in this item pool were investigated, then similar expressions were eliminated and ambiguous expressions were excluded. Also the remaining items arranged in sentences and study was continued on a total of 48 items. For the purpose of identifying intelligibility of the items, these 48 items applied to seven fathers as a pilot study. As a result of that application, it was seen that there was no vague item and 48 items were used to analyze. According to the results of the principal axis factoring analysis with direct oblimin rotation, 11 items were excluded from the scale. The final version of the scale consisted of 37 items. Three dimensions emerged as a result of factor analysis named as Arbitrary Occupation (AO), Attention and Closeness (AC), and Primary Care (PC), considering the items in these dimensions. According to the results of reliability analyses, Cronbach's alpha values were found as .89 for Arbitrary Occupation (AO), .83 for Primary Care (PC), .85 for Attention and Closeness (AC) and .92 for total score of the scale. According to the results of the validity and reliability analyses it was established that father involvement scale developed in this study has sufficient level of psychometric properties. Key Words: Father involvement, father-child relationship, father involvement scale

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