Taking stock of 22 years of mentoring research through 22 seminal studies

By Jean Rhodes

Citation: Hagler, M. A., Jones, K. V., Anderson, A. J., McQuillin, S. D., Weiler, L. M., & Sánchez, B. (2023). Striving for safety, impact, and equity: A critical consideration of AJCP publications on formal youth mentoring programs. American Journal of Community Psychology, 1–13.https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12702

In an excellent new empirical review published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP), a team of mentoring researchers took a comprehensive look at publications in youth mentoring research over the years. This review, titled “Striving for safety, impact, and equity: A critical consideration of AJCP publications on formal youth mentoring programs,” offers a reflective lens on the mentoring landscape, its evolution, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

As the authors note: “Community psychologists and their collaborators have produced important scholarship, advancing the field’s understanding of the conditions and practices through which mentoring is safest and most effective. Many seminal studies have been published in AJCP. With the benefit of time, perspective, and collective wisdom gained from decades of research and practice, we are excited to reconsider this body of work with both a critical lens and hopeful eye towards the future”.

Methodological Rigor:
The team curated a selection of articles that would represent the breadth and depth of mentoring scholarship in AJCP, the top community psychology journal where hundreds of mentoring program articles have been published. Their search yielded 43 potential articles, from which they aimed to select approximately 20 that would best showcase the progress, scope, and major themes of this scholarship. Using a 3-tier scale, the team rated articles based on their relevance, significance, and contribution to the field. The consensus process resulted in a final list of 22 articles, encompassing a meta-analysis, program evaluations, secondary analyses, qualitative and mixed-methods studies, and theoretical reviews and commentaries.

As the authors note: “A pivotal moment in the history of mentoring scholarship was AJCP’s 2002 special issue on mentoring—the first of its kind— which included two seminal articles on formal mentoring (DuBois et al., 2002; Grossman & Rhodes, 2002). Both studies showed that mentoring could be effective and beneficial for youth, under the right conditions, while also documenting that, under others, programs could be ineffective or even harmful.

Together, these two articles raised ethical and safety concerns, highlighted the need for more research to identify the practices under which mentoring is safe and effective, and established several thematic areas of scholarly inquiry, including (1) the importance of forming high‐quality mentoring relationships, (2) associations among youth presenting problems, relationship quality, and program outcomes, and (3) program practices that lead to stronger, more impactful matches.”

The authors then trace these themes throughout the 22 selected articles (described), emphasizing both novel and replicated findings.

Authors’ Recommendations and Suggested Future Directions:

1. Prevent Unexpected Relationship Endings: The authors emphasize the importance of strategies to prevent premature and unexpected endings of mentoring relationships.
2. Centering Social Justice and Activism: The call is clear – mentoring practices should be deeply rooted in principles of social justice, activism, and cultural responsivity.
3. Ecologically Valid Models: The authors advocate for mentoring models that resonate more closely with real-world contexts, such as youth-initiated, caregiver-engaged, grassroots, and community-originated mentoring.
4. Engaging Marginalized Communities: The field must make genuine efforts to collaborate with marginalized youth and communities, ensuring their voices are central to the mentoring discourse

Table of Contents (All Published in the American Journal of Community Psychology)

A Pilot Evaluation of a Social Justice and Race Equity Training for Volunteer Mentors

• This pilot study explored how race equity training and social justice affect the cognitive and affective outcomes of volunteer mentors within the context of cultural humility in mentoring.
• Mentors’ self-efficiency in providing racial and ethnic support increased due to training.
• This indicates that race equity training can do the following…
  • Help mentees cope with discrimination and develop a positive racial/ethnic identity.
  • Boost mentors’ confidence in supporting their mentees.

Mentoring and depressive symptoms of youth: Examining prospective and interactive associations with mentoring relationship quality

• This study explored the relationship between depressive symptoms and mentoring relationship quality.
• Mean youth depression symptoms declined after engaging in the mentorship program.
• Several youth-reported aspects of relationship quality correlated with shifts in youth depression symptoms.
• Baseline depression symptoms negatively predicted relationship quality indicators.
• Baseline depression symptoms affected the correlation between several relationship quality indicators and follow-up depression symptoms.

Mentoring Relationship Closures in Big Brothers Big Sisters Community Mentoring Programs: Patterns and Associated Risk Factors

• The researchers of this study sought to examine the capacity of youth vulnerability to personal and environmental risk factors, motives for program enrollment, and mentoring program supports and relationship processes that predict the closure of mentoring relationships.
• Roughly one-third of mentees had their mentoring relationship close early at or before 11 months of duration. By 12 months, 46% had experienced a closure.
• Youth behavioral difficulties were also associated with early closures.
• Factors that significantly reduced the chance of an early relationship closure included: strong parental support, mentoring relationships rated by parents and youth as high quality, and frequent weekly contact between mentors and mentees. Having three or more caseworker-initiated contacts with parents was also negatively associated with early closures.

Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs for Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review

• This meta-analysis, consisting of fifty-five evaluations, assessed the effects of youth mentoring programs.
• Results indicate that there is a small, modest benefit of program engagement.
• However, program effects were notably enhanced when there were stronger mentorships forming and when more theory-based and empirically based “best practices” were utilized.
• At-risk youth are most likely to benefit from mentoring programs.
• At-risk youth outcomes varied substantially in relation to program characteristics.

Chronicle Summary Highlights:

• The current study included a diverse sample of 1,139 adolescents (average age: 11.2 years), who were part of a national evaluation of Big Brother Big Sisters’ school-based mentoring program.
• After accounting for selection bias, academic impacts were found only amongst those youth with intact matches.
• Youth who experienced premature match terminations and who were not re-matched showed no significant differences from the controls.
• Re-matched youth fared worse, however, performing 1.6 points lower than the controls.
• Youth who had endured a greater number of life stressors prior to being matched were at greater risk for early match termination.
• Two mentor characteristics were related to the likelihood that a match terminated—being a college student and having prior experience being a mentor. Matches with college student mentors were more likely to terminate early.

• This study assesses the effectiveness of LET’s CONNECT (LC), a community mentoring program for children who have social problems.
• LC correlated with increased connectedness at the 6-month mark of the program. It was also associated with notable yet insignificant effects on lower depression levels and community connectedness.
• The program did not have an impact on suicidal ideation.

• This study evaluated program, mentor, and mentee traits as predictors of premature match closure.
• Adolescent mentees are at extremely high risk for premature match closure.
• Family risk factors correlate with early termination of mentorships.
• Risky health behaviors strongly are predictive of premature match closure.
• Cumulative mentee risk significantly predicts premature match closure.

• This study explores what predicts premature mentoring relationship termination in Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS).
• Findings indicate that mentors and mentees who have the same racial &/or ethnic identity have a lower risk of terminating their relationship prematurely. This also applied to mentees’ positive perceptions of their relationship.
• Mentoring relationship quality, on average, correlated with premature termination.
• Further diversifying the available mentor pool for more matching opportunities can help reduce the risk of premature mentorship termination.

• This study explores the influence of mentee-reported relationship quality and mentor-reported use of goal-setting and feedback-oriented activities on academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes.
• Results suggested that youth-reported relationship quality was associated with small to medium effects on outcomes. Moreover, goal-setting and feedback-oriented activities were associated with moderate to large effects on outcomes.
• There was a significant interaction between relationship quality and goal-setting and feedback-oriented activities on youth outcomes.

Chronicle Summary Highlights:

• In this study, we explored whether the effectiveness of mentoring varied depending on levels of youth risk, including youth stressors and problem behaviors. Within this context, we sought to identify the characteristics of mentors who may be better suited for building relationships with more vulnerable youth. We paid particular attention to mentors’ previous experiences and goals.
• This study highlights the importance of taking youth risk and mentor characteristics into account. Better guidelines, as well as training protocols for mentors such as those available through Mentoring Central, can incorporate practices that improve outcomes for at-risk youth. With better understanding and tools, we can improve the reach of mentoring to youth of all backgrounds.

From Treatment to Empowerment: New Approaches to Youth Mentoring

• Traditional approaches to formal youth mentoring have focused primarily on improving the lives of “at-risk” youth through the assignment of individual mentors who are typically disconnected from youths’ communities. Similarly, research in the field of formal mentoring has emphasized the dyadic relationship between the mentor and the mentee, with less attention paid to the broader relational contexts in which such relationships unfold.
• The current paper proposes a new framework that expands the scope of mentoring interventions to include approaches that build on and cultivate informal supports and empower youth to identify and reach out to networks of potential supportive adults, thus increasing the reach of youth mentoring.

Youth Initiated Mentoring: Investigating a New Approach to Working with Vulnerable Adolescents

• This article examines the use of Youth Initiated Mentoring (YIM) in the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program (NGYCP), an intensive residential program for youth who have dropped out of school, which includes a unique mentoring component after program completion.
• Results from the study demonstrate that enduring YIM mentoring relationships were associated with greater retention of outcomes in NGYCP, particularly those who maintained their relationships with their mentors at the 38-month follow-up; they showed more positive benefits compared to controls in all areas except for substance use.
• The study also showed that the majority of YIM relationships were long-lasting with 74% of matches continuing at 21-month follow-up; this is much longer than traditional formal mentoring relationships.
• Results also showed that youth who chose their mentors on their own had more enduring relationships, showing that youth may be best at determining who would be a good match for them, and/or youth may be more invested in a relationship that they chose (Deci & Ryan, 1985).
• Practically speaking, YIM relationships could help reduce the costs of recruiting mentors and also address the problems surrounding premature terminations of relationships.

• Benchmark program practices and Standards in the Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, 3rd Edition (MENTOR, 2009) were assessed in the current study as predictors of match longevity.
• The study provides further insights into the population of youth in foster care who are being served by mentoring programs and provides evidence that mentoring programs are attuned to the unique needs of foster care youth.

Mentoring Program Enhancements Supporting Effective Mentoring of Children of Incarcerated Parents

• This study analyzes how mentoring, as well as mentoring program enhancements, affect children of incarcerated parents.
• The results indicated that enhanced program practices led to more positive outcomes for children of incarcerated parents. They found that specifically having extra funding as well as having specialized mentor training correlate with stable and longer-lasting matches.
• The study simultaneously shows that having specific goals in catering to children of incarcerated parents correlated to higher expectations in education for children of incarcerated parents.

A Positive Youth Development Approach to Improving Mental Health Outcomes for Maltreated Children in Foster Care: Replication and Extension of an RCT of the Fostering Healthy Futures Program

• These researchers sought to replicate and extend the findings from a pilot study on the efficacy of the Fostering Healthy Futures (FHF) program, a preventative curriculum designed to improve outcomes for children who have faced substantial adversity living in out-of-home care.
• Ultimately, these authors found that children placed in the FHF intervention condition showed marked improvements on these measures as compared with the assessment-only control group.
• These results suggest excellent intervention success potential for positive youth development programs in a sample that was diverse in its sociodemographic makeup, maltreatment history, and cognitive, behavioral, and academic levels of functioning.

Youth Risk and Mentoring Relationship Quality: The Moderating Effect of Program Experiences