Dr Fran Vertue is supervising a student’s Masters thesis at the University of Canterbury.

This study will explore the mental health and parenting practices of New Zealand parents who have separated in the past year or two.

We decided to conduct this study online, as it is convenient for most people, and helps to maintain your privacy. Read the information below, and if you’re interested, please take the link to the study.

Participate in the University of Canterbury survey and you will be entered into a draw for one of three $100 vouchers (your choice of a $100 Westfield shopping voucher or a $100 fuel voucher).

Hello, I am Kirsten Ritchie from the University of Canterbury and I am researching the psychological and parenting challenges of separated parents.

I invite you to take part in this important project if you are a parent who has separated in the past year or two. The survey I am asking you to participate in will take approximately 20 minutes to complete, and you will be asked to complete one shorter follow-up survey later in the year.

The first thing we ask is for your name and email address so that we can then send you a link into our secure server where you will find the survey. You will be asked questions about yourself, your relationship, your parenting practices, and be asked about your psychological wellbeing.

Any information you provide will be strictly confidential, and will not be disclosed to any other person or organisation.

To ensure complete confidentiality, your email address and any additional characteristics that may identify you as a participant are collected only for consent, and to send out reminders for the second survey later in the year.

This information will be available only to the Principal Researcher and will be secured on a locked computer in a locked office within the Psychology Department.

Your survey information will be assigned a code number and the only people who will have access to the matching of code numbers and the email addresses of the participants are the Principal Researcher and her supervisors.

This study has been approved by the Human Ethics Committee of the University of Canterbury.

To begin participating in the survey, please go to this website (http://psycdb.canterbury.ac.nz/limesurvey) and click on “The Mental Health and Parenting Practices of Recently Separated Parents”. Once you have registered your name and email address , you will be sent a secure link to more detailed information and the beginning of the survey.

Kirsten Ritchie
Principal Researcher in this project
University of Canterbury
telephone 03 364 2987 extension 3638
email khr19@uclive.ac.nz

We have been approached to help recruit especially solo fathers to this study in order to make it as representative as possible of the population. See here for details. You’re asked to use the study code SOLOD if that applies to you.

Father & Child Trust is looking for fathers who have day-to-day care of at least one child eight years or under in either Christchurch or Auckland. The Trust is conducting what is believed to be the first study in New Zealand on the circumstances, issues and support of solo fathers and their young children. (more…)

Fathers Research Declined — Again!

New Zealand has 24,000 solo dads with dependent children, most of them in paid employment and typically plugging away without any direct support.

How they became solo dads, whether they or their children need anything or if there is useful information to help them is not known.

Another funding body has declined Father & Child’s latest application for help to research solo fathers in NZ. This initiative has also been unsuccessful in two other funding requests.

The study aims to assess the present situation of full-time solo fathers with dependent children under eight, perceived needs for themselves and their children, effectiveness of family service agencies in reaching them, and what support initiatives may be acceptable to them.

Father & Child’s last research initiative, the teenage fathers project, was funded by an international agency for Early Childhood Development, the Hague-based Bernard van Leer Foundation, after all local requests for funding assistance came to nothing.