What We Know (and Don’t) About Mentoring in Rural Settings

Aschenbrener, C. S., & Edwards, K. (2023). Mentoring youth in rural settings. National Mentoring Resource Center, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. https://www.ojjdp.ojp.gov/library/publications/mentoring-youth-rural-settings

Introduction

Roughly one in five Americans, nearly 60 million people, lives in a rural setting, yet mentoring research has largely overlooked this population. One meta-analysis found that 87% of mentoring outcome studies drew on urban or suburban samples, versus just 4% rural (Raposa et al., 2019). This gap persists despite considerable diversity within rural communities, including sizable populations of color, Indigenous youth, and sexual and gender minorities. The limited evidence that does exist is inconsistent: one meta-analysis found no effectiveness difference by locale (Raposa et al., 2019), while another found peer mentoring worked better in urban settings (Burton et al., 2021). Rural programs also face distinct structural barriers, smaller budgets and harder mentor recruitment, but longer average match lengths (Garringer et al., 2017). Aschenbrener and colleagues (2023) set out to consolidate what is actually known about mentoring young people in these settings, examining effectiveness, program characteristics, mechanisms of change, and implementation challenges.

Methods

The authors searched PubMed, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, and PsycINFO alongside Google Scholar, supplementing database searches with expert referrals and reference-list tracing. They restricted their scope to U.S.-based research on youth under 18 in rural or non-urban settings, using U.S. Census Bureau definitions of rurality.

Results

Most studies evaluating the effectiveness of mentoring in rural settings found positive outcomes across physical health, academic engagement, and substance use domains. Physical health emerged as one of the better-documented outcomes. A peer-mentoring program pairing 10th graders with 7th graders in Appalachian schools produced reductions in sedentary behavior and sugar intake alongside increases in physical activity. A 20-year evaluation of a school-based peer mentoring project in a low-income rural community found increases in school and community belonging, sense of purpose, and motivation among mentored youth, though findings elsewhere were more mixed. Native youth in a culturally grounded case study showed positive educational outcomes and stronger cultural identity, while one study of Black youth found no improvement in absenteeism despite evidence of a genuine mentor-mentee bond.

Findings were notably encouraging for minoritized youth, though only five studies addressed this question directly, and results are inconsistent. Gender moderated outcomes in some studies (stronger physical activity gains for boys in one trial, greater weight loss for girls in another) but not others. Mentor consistency mattered more than mentor-mentee gender matching: one study found that inconsistent mentor attendance predicted worse outcomes than no mentor at all. While mentoring shows real promise for rural youth, particularly minoritized youth, the evidence available remains too thin and methodologically limited to draw firm conclusions about which program models or characteristics work best.

Discussion

Methodological limitations, including small samples and a scarcity of randomized designs, constrain how confidently these findings generalize. This matters because findings from a single rural school or community may not generalize to rural settings elsewhere, given how much rural communities vary from one another in demographics, resources, and culture. The review also identifies a structural gap in the literature: most rural mentoring research examines informal mentors or homegrown, grassroots programs, while established national programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, 4-H, and the National FFA Organization operate extensively in rural areas but have produced very little empirical evaluation data. This makes it difficult to say whether these seasoned programs are effective for rural youth specifically, despite their scale and longevity. Finally, several studies bundled mentoring within larger interventions (life-coaching, after-school programming, career planning), making it hard to isolate mentoring’s unique contribution from the broader program package. Structural barriers unique to rural settings, such as transportation distances, mentor recruitment, and thinner funding bases, appear to shape both implementation quality and program sustainability more than in urban contexts.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

The review offers four recommendations for mentoring programs serving rural youth:

1. 1. Adapt urban models cautiously. Programs built for well-resourced urban environments often assume access to community assets, referral networks, and staffing levels that rural programs lack. Adapting such models requires rethinking staffing structure and what services youth can realistically be connected to locally.
   2. Build on rural strengths rather than working around them. Slower pace of life and access to outdoor space can extend mentoring interactions well beyond a typical hour-long urban match, and the relative homogeneity of many rural communities can give mentors and mentees more shared ground to build rapport. Community pride and a collectivism can be leveraged for mentor recruitment and volunteer support.
   3. Plan for rural-specific obstacles. These include thin staffing (with limited redundancy if a single staff member leaves), reduced privacy and confidentiality given the small-town dynamic of “everyone knows everyone,” and tension where a rural community’s shared identity leaves newer or minoritized residents feeling excluded.
   4. Prioritize youth facing the most marginalization. Racial and ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minority youth, and recent arrivals to a rural community may benefit disproportionately from mentors who can offer acceptance and a sense of belonging, and mentoring programs can play a direct role in countering local stigma rather than simply mitigating its effects.

Read the full article here