The impact of a gender-tailored group mentoring program on peer relationships

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Bouchard, J., & Wong, J. S. (2024). I get by with a little help from my friends: The impact of a gender-tailored group mentoring program on peer relationships. Journal of Early Adolescence.

Introduction

Adolescents often face challenges in maintaining friendships as they transition to high school, which can result in feelings of isolation and decreased social support (Benner et al., 2017; Ng-Knight et al., 2019). Group mentoring has been posited as a potential intervention to buffer these negative outcomes by fostering peer support and creating stable, meaningful friendships. The YEP, a set of gender-specific after-school mentoring programs, was developed to address these social disruptions, aiming to equip adolescents with the skills needed to form and maintain supportive friendships.

Methods

YEP groups ran for 9 weeks, and each session was 150minutes long. Group facilitators received in-person and online training.

A quasi-experimental design was utilized, allowing for assessment of the impact of the YEP compared to a control. Students self-selected into these groups, resulting in a sample of 668 students (233 in the treatment group and 435 in the control group) from 31 schools in Vancouver. Participants completed surveys that included the School Success Profile Friend Support Scale, a validated measure of perceived peer support.

Multilevel modeling (MLM) was used to analyze the data, accounting for the clustered nature of the data (students within schools and over time). Propensity score weighting was applied to minimize selection bias, as participation in the YEP was voluntary.

Results

The findings indicated that participation in the YEP had a significant positive impact on perceptions of friend support, but only in the long term. Short-term results (from pre-test to post-test) did not show significant differences between the treatment and control groups.

Notably, gender was a significant predictor of perceived friend support, with males reporting lower levels of peer support than females both before and after the intervention. However, no gender differences were observed in the program’s impact, indicating that the YEP was equally effective for both males and females in promoting peer support over time.

The long-term analysis, conducted after students had transitioned to high school, revealed that YEP participants experienced a significant increase in perceived friend support compared to the control group.

Discussion

Bouchard and Wong’s study provides important evidence that gender-tailored group mentoring can have lasting positive effects on adolescents’ social relationships, particularly during the transition to high school. The delayed effect observed in the study may reflect the nature of the transition itself—while students may not immediately apply the skills learned in the program, they may find them increasingly useful as they form new peer relationships in high school.

Implications for Mentoring Programs

The findings from this study have several key implications for the design and implementation of mentoring programs:

  • Gender-sensitive approaches: Programs should consider gender differences in social relationships, with specific strategies to support males who may experience lower levels of peer support. Extending this programs will want to consider developing interventions for gender nonconforming individuals, who may experience particular challenges related to social safety.
  • Group dynamics: The group format of mentoring can foster a sense of belonging and peer support, which may be difficult to achieve through one-to-one mentoring models.

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