Fathers Empowered to Learn, Lead, and Achieve Success (FELLAS) Program, Essex County, New Jersey, 2021-2025 (ICPSR 39807)
Version Date: Aug 3, 2026 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Michael Young, Center for Evidence-Based Programming
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39807.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
Fathers Empowered to Learn, Lead, and Achieve Success (FELLAS) is a Responsible Fatherhood program, funded by the Office of Family Assistance, and provided by the Partnership for Maternal and Child Health in Northern New Jersey. The program served community-based fathers aged 18 and older who reside in Essex County, New Jersey. To be eligible for the program, fathers must have had at least one child aged 24 or younger. Expectant fathers were eligible. The FELLAS program consisted of three key components:
- Responsible Parenting: Uses 24/7 Dad, an evidence-based, father-focused parenting curriculum designed to enhance parenting skills.
- Healthy Marriage/Relationship Skills: Incorporates Couple Communication I, an evidence-based curriculum that includes home visits to strengthen relationships and marriage dynamics.
- Economic Stability: Provides a comprehensive set of services, including employment assessments, basic technology training, and pre-employment soft skills development.
The core program consisted of 35 hours of intensive workshops, broken down as follows:
- 24 hours of 24/7 Dad group sessions
- 6 hours of economic stability group sessions
- 5 hours of Couple Communication I group sessions
- The program was taught over 15 weeks, two-three hours per week
For the five weeks prior to the start of each cohort, the Father Program Specialists (FPSs) recruited fathers by conducting street outreach throughout Essex County, outreach in-person at childcare centers and schools, outreach and marketing to local partners requesting referrals to the program. They also encouraged fathers who had previously completed the program to assist with word-of-mouth marketing. Recruitment was also facilitated, in part, by The Partnership's extensive experience in the community. Two cohorts were conducted each year. Each FPS facilitated the FELLAS programming for the fathers he recruited and also served as the case manager for these fathers.
Citation View help for Citation
Export Citation:
Funding View help for Funding
Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
This data collection may not be used for any purpose other than statistical reporting and analysis. Use of these data to learn the identity of any person or establishment is prohibited. To protect respondent privacy, some of the data files in this collection are restricted from general dissemination. To obtain these restricted files researchers must agree to the terms and conditions of a Restricted Data Use Agreement.
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
- This collection is part of the Focus on Fathers (FOF) Series. For similar study information and characteristics, please refer to other studies within the series.
- For additional information on this study, please visit the FELLAS website.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The goals of this study were to enhance parenting skills, strengthen relationships and marriage dynamics, and promote economic stability for participants.
Sample View help for Sample
Community-based fathers aged 18 and older who reside in Essex County, New Jersey. To be eligible for the program, fathers must have had at least one child aged 24 or younger. Expectant fathers were eligible.
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Fathers or expectant fathers aged 18 and older who reside in Essex County, New Jersey.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
The data contains variables about respondents' employment, children, parenting techniques, and relationship dynamics.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
Response rates were as follows:
- Local Evaluation Pretest Participant Responses: 376
- Local Evaluation Posttest Participant Responses: 293 (78%)
- Local Evaluation 6 Month Follow Up Participant Responses: 263 (70%)
- Total Participants that took all three surveys (I.E. Matched Participants): 221
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
Several Likert type scales were used.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2026-08-03
Version History View help for Version History
2026-08-03 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Created variable labels and/or value labels.
- Created online analysis version with question text.
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
Notes
These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?
One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.