July 19, 2018-There is a danger with many of the studies where the researchers rely only on the mothers’ reports and ignore the fathers’ points of view

In our last post, we cautioned against “woozling” your data. In this post, we note that researchers should not ignore fathers’ in the data gathering process. Here is what Prof. Nielsen had to say:

Fourth, almost all of the data regarding children’s well-being and about the level of conflict between the parents comes only from the mothers. Without the fathers’ input, especially in the JPC families where children are living with each parent at least 35% of the time, we cannot know how accurate the mothers’ reports are. Likewise, relying only on the others’ reports of conflict between the parents may be yielding an inaccurate or skewed view.

Linda Nielsen (2018): Joint versus sole physical custody: Outcomes for children independent of family income or parental conflict, Journal of Child Custody, DOI: 10.1080/15379418.2017.1422414, at page 16.