Impact of Mentor ship on Middle School African-American Males
Ages 11 to 14 Years Old
Dissertation Proposal
Submitted to
Graduate Faculty of the School of Education
in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
By
Abstract
There is a general consensus among educators, educational policy makers, and the public that the education system should produce citizens who are proficient in all core curriculum areas, work and interact well with others from diverse backgrounds, behave well, and avoid problem behaviors. However, there are serious challenges that hinder successful provision of education at all levels. Particularly, at risk youth, who are exposed to extraordinary challenges such as lack of consistent support, care, and guidance from parents and dangerous neighborhoods, making it difficult for them to negotiate the developmental and social changes they are exposed to. Youth mentoring has been suggested as an effective strategy for helping at risk youth as it holds a significant potential for a variety of positive behavioral, relational, motivational, health, and attitudinal outcomes. Although there are mentoring programs focused on African American males, sparse research has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of such programs. In this regard, the proposed quantitative study will seek to determine if students mentored at Kappa League have better self-perceptions of academic abilities, global self-worth, and college-going self-efficacy. The study will adopt a quasi-experimental design, particularly a non-equivalent control group posttest-only design. The design was particularly appropriate because mentoring is underway. Additionally, the design was attractive because of its ability to control for the effect of external events and influences that participants might have been exposed to during mentoring other than the mentoring experiences. Study participants will include at risk African American middle school males ages 11-14 years old and registered at Kappa League.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Background 3
Statement of the Problem 7
Purpose of the Study 8
Research Questions 9
Nature of the Study 10
Significance of the Study 12
Definition of Key Terms 12
Summary 13
Chapter 2: Literature Review 15
Documentation 16
Understanding Mentoring 16
Structural Settings of Youth Mentoring 18
Models of Youth Mentoring 23
Outcomes of Youth Mentoring on the Youth 29
Factors Influencing Youth Mentoring Outcomes 37
Mentoring At-Risk African American Males 56
Challenges Facing Youth Mentoring 68
Summary 71
Chapter 3: Research Method 73
Hypotheses 75
Research Methods and Design 76
Population 78
Sample 78
Materials/Instruments 79
Operational Definition of Variables 80
Data Collection, Processing, and Analysis 81
Assumptions 82
Limitations 82
Delimitations 83
Ethical Assurances 83
Summary 84
References 86
Appendixes 95
Appendix A: Parental Consent 96
Appendix B: Student Assent 97
List of Figures
Figure 1. Conceptual Model of MYM 26
Chapter 1: Introduction
The United States Supreme Court, in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954), ruled that separate educational facilities based on race were inherently unequal. A half century later, the challenge to provide an equitable education system to all children, regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability, or language barrier persist (Schargel, 2013). Official statistics from the US Department of Education show that low enrollment, high dropout rates, low completion rates, college-readiness, academic proficiency, and low graduation rates remain as a concern among at risk students (Schargel, 2013; Radcliffe & Bos, 2011; Thompson & Kelly-Vance, 2001). In this light, Schargel (2013) has observed, “America today faces a crisis in education” (p. 10). Many times, at- risk students opt to permanently leave school, a decision perpetuating further risk factors such as teenage pregnancy, single parenting, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, low self-esteem, and juvenile criminals (Schargel, 2013; Thompson & Kelly-Vance, 2001). This situation threatens American’s ability to compete effectively in the future world (Schargel, 2013).
The use of mentoring programs has been shown to improve behavioral, social, attitudinal, and academic outcomes in the development of at risk American youth (Campbell-Whatley, Algozzine & Obiakor, 1997; DuBois, Portillo, Rhodes, Silverthorn, & Valentine, 2011; Hall, 2006; Herrera, Grossman, Kauh, & McMaken, 2011; Phinney, Campos, Kallemeyn, & Kim, 2011; Radcliffe & Bos, 2011; Schwartz, Rhodes, Chan, & Herrera, 2011). Mentoring programs are associated with improved academic achievement, scholarly productivity, academic persistence, identity development, professional development, and psychological health (Eby et al., 2013; Lakind, Eddy, & Zell, 2014).
There were an estimated 46 million young people ages 8 to 18 years old as of July 2013 in the US (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). Among these, 24 million are at-risk while 22 million have no risk factors. Among the 24 million at risk youth, 15 million have benefited from both informal mentoring relationships (10.5 million) and structured mentoring programs (4.5 million) (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). Therefore, the number of at-risk youth benefiting from structured mentoring programs has increased from an estimated 300,000 in the early 1990s to more than 4.5 million in the year 2013 (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). Despite this remarkable improvement, the mentoring gap is huge, with 9 million at-risk young people having had neither structured nor informal mentoring relationships (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). Although Bruce and Bridgeland (2014) did not provide statistics of at-risk youth because of youth ethnicities, it is acknowledged that a significant number of African American (AA) youth, especially the males, is at a disadvantage within the American educational system (Brittian, Sy & Stokes, 2009; Gordon, Iwamoto, Ward, Potts & Boyd, 2009).
AA youth are disproportionately overrepresented in disciplinary issues, more likely to perform poorly academically, more likely to drop out of high school, more likely to be suspended or expelled, more unlikely to transit to college, and more unlikely to persist while in college (Brittian et al., 2009; Butler, Evans, Brooks, Williams, & Bailey, 2013; The Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2012; Urban Council Strategies, 2012). Kappa League (KL) is among more than 4,000 agencies and youth mentoring organizations providing youth mentoring services to at-risk students throughout USA, with a view of closing the mentoring gap. The primary focus of KL, a community-based mentoring program (CBM) founded in 1969, is personal development, academic achievement, and preparation for college and career. KL stands out for the proposed study because it specially focuses on AA male students aged 11 to 14 years throughout the country.
Background
There seems to be a recent consensus in literature that student mentorship is beneficial to at-risk students if the mentoring programs are properly implemented (Dubois et al., 2011; Eby et al., 2013; Herrera, DuBois, & Grossman, 2013; Leake, Burgstahler, & Izzo, 2011; Thomson & Zand, 2010; Yadav, O’Reilly, & Karim, 2010). As a result, there has been a rise in structured mentoring programs in the US (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). A mentoring relationship may occur naturally between the youth and an older, more experienced adult, or be introduced as an intervention (Black, Grenard, Sussman, & Rohrbach, 2010; Butler et al., 2013; Chan et al., 2013; Khazanov, 2011; Phinney et al., 2011). Mentoring programs match at risk youth with nonparental volunteer adults who act as mentors (Ng, Lai & Chan, 2014). Mentors act as role models to the at risk youth, provide support and guidance, provide academic assistance, and expose the youth to new things and experiences (Bernstein, Rappaport, Olsho, Hunt, & Levin, 2009). The key assumption underlying mentoring programs is that the presence of supportive adults serving as mentors might help students improve in their educational attainment and avoid problem behaviors in order to be successful in life.
There are two chief kinds of formal mentoring programs: school- and community-based mentoring programs. School-based mentoring takes place in school settings in the course of a school year, which lasts for nine months. However, in practice, mentoring duration is often delayed, and does not start until the third month of the school year (Bernstein et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013). Community-based mentoring takes place in neighborhood settings throughout a calendar year (Grossman et al., 2012). School-based mentoring is the fastest growing, may be because of its cost implications compared with community-based mentoring programs (Schwartz et al., 2010). The cost per relationship in school-based mentoring is far much less than the same for community-based mentoring programs (Bernstein et al., 2009. However, some organizations such as Kappa League are still engaged in community-based mentoring. The main advantage of community-based mentoring over school-based mentoring program is that the former tends to be more intensive (Bernstein et al., 2009).
Mentoring might be an effective intervention for improving behavioral, relational, motivational, attitudinal, and health outcomes among at risk youth (Eby et al., 2013; Ng et al., 2014). The behavioral outcomes of mentoring are typically demonstrated through performance. For students, behavioral outcomes might be academic performance, classroom effort, reducing skipping school rate and aggressive behavior. Mentoring programs that are designed to improve behavioral outcomes seek to increase desirable behaviors such as classroom effort and decrease undesirable behavior such as school absences (Eby et al., 2013). Previous research shows that mentoring is associated with improvements in academic performance and other educational outcomes (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera vet al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013; Thomson & Zand, 2010). Relational outcomes are usually related to interpersonal relations such as parent trust, communication with parents, positive peer relationships, and peer support (Eby et al., 2013). Mentoring equips the youth with appropriate skills that they can use to handle challenges at home and at school and hence build better interpersonal relationships with parents and teachers. (Eby et al., 2013). Mentoring also plays a critical role developing positive self-perceptions (Dubois et al., 2011). It has been observed that the most important outcome of mentoring is improving the at risk youth’s self-perceptions (Dubois et al., 2011). This is one reason why the proposed study is focused on studying the effects of KL mentoring program on the self-perceptions of AA males. The self-perceptions of focus in the proposed study include academic ability self-perceptions, perceptions of global self-worth, and college-going self-perceptions.
All at risk students experience mentoring differently (Gross et al., 2012; Herrera et al., 2013; Schwartz et al., 2012). Researchers (e.g. Gross et al., 2012; Herrera et al., 2013; Schwartz et al., 2012) have attempted to study factors that influence or mediate mentoring effects on the youth. This body of research shows that features and practices related to the mentoring programs, youth characteristics, and mentors characteristics determine how the youth benefit from mentoring relationships. Some of the factors that have been identified include duration of the mentoring relationship (Britner &Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010; Chan et al., 2013; Dubois et al., 2011; Grossman et al., 2012), quality of the mentoring relationship (Chan et al., 2013; Grossman et al., 2012; Thomson, 2010; Thomson & Rand, 2010; Thomson & Zand, 2010), developmental stage of the youth (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Hickman & Wright, 2011; Kolar & McBride, 2011; Thomson & Zand, 2010), youth’s interpersonal histories (Dubois et al., 2011; Romero-Canyas, Downey, Berenson, Ayduk, & Kang, 2010; Schwartz et al., 2010), and program characteristics (Britner & Kraimer-Rickably, 2010; Dubois et al., 2011; Hansen, Romens & LaFleur, 2011; Herrera, Dubois, & Grossman, 2013).
Although the impact of mentoring on at risk students has been studied extensively, little has been done to develop theories for explaining how mentoring work. Only two theories (Social Development Model and Model of Youth Mentoring) have been suggested (Hawkins & Weis, 1985; Rhodes, 2002). Social development model (SDM) (Hawkins & Weis, 1985), has not received much attention while model of youth modeling (MYM) has a considerable following. MYM holds that there must be prerequisite conditions in order to realize the benefits of mentoring. MYM posits that mentoring produces desirable effects on three key domains including socio-emotional, cognitive, and identity development.
Researchers who have studied mentoring among AA youth have linked it to racial identity (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd, Sánchez, Zimmerman, & Caldwell, 2012 . Racial identity reflects the process and complexity involved in an individual’s perceptions of race and issues of racial importance. Gordon et al. (2009) and Hurd et al. (2012) have argued that mentoring improves educational outcomes through its effect on racial identity. Mentoring shapes racial identity among AA youth, which brings about improved academic beliefs and subsequent better educational attainment (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). The proponents of this view argue that the support that AA youth receive during mentoring equips them with the skills they need to explore and develop their racial identity, especially given that mentoring has socialization aspects (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). In light of the role of racial identity in educational attainment, it has been proposed that mentoring programs be designed in a way that serve the needs of AA youths (Gordon et al., 2009). Consequently, mentoring programs targeting AA youth such as KL have been designed to address the needs of at risk AA youth. Academic identification, racial identity and mentoring relationship based on Afro-centric underpinnings might be crucial protective factors for the academic success of African Americans (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). It is, therefore, crucial to evaluate all afro-centric mentoring programs (such as KL) to determine how much they have been useful in promoting positive outcomes among AA males (Gordon et al., 2009).
Statement of the Problem
Although the American public education system is not legally segregated along ethnic lines, at-risk minority groups such as AA males continue to be at a disadvantage in realizing the full benefits of education (Aud et al., 2011; Chapman et al., 2013; Schargel, 2013). They might have been experiencing feelings of exclusion from the rest of the school and have been unable to develop a sense of identity that includes the school system (Butler, Evans, Brooks, Williams, & Bailey, 2013; Gordon et al., 2009). This is a worrying situation because according to Howard (2013) and Washington (2013), poor academic performance of AA young males affects negatively on their future success. Fortunately, literature shows that school-based and community-based mentoring programs are effective in promoting positive perceptions about academic abilities, academic performance, test scores, and high school perseverance among young people (DuBois et al., 2011; Gordon et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2011; Niepel, Brunner & Preckel, 2014; Phinney et al., 2011; Radcliff & Bos, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2011; Seaton, Parker, Marsh, Craven, & Yeung, 2014). However, little has been done to examine the impact of mentoring programs particularly tailored to the needs of at-risk middle school AA males, despite the potential benefits of the programs to the students (DuBois et al., 2011; Gordon et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2011). In particular, Gordon et al. (2009) observed that little research has investigated the effectiveness of afro-centric mentoring programs on AA male youth in the middle school, and underlined the need for such studies. In this respect, the specific problem to be addressed in the proposed study is the lack of clear understanding of the effectiveness of an afro-centric youth mentoring program, Kappa League, in solving the challenges facing at-risk AA male students’ ages 11-14 years old.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the proposed quantitative study is to examine the impact of the afro-centric mentorship program offered at Kappa League on AA males’ self-perceptions. Particularly, the purpose of the proposed study is to compare two groups of AA young men, those who receive mentoring and those who do not, to determine the effect mentoring has on self-perceptions of academic abilities (as measured by the scholastic subscale of Self Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985)), global self-worth (as measured by the Self-Esteem Questionnaire (Dubois et al., 1996)), and college-going self-efficacy (as measured by College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b)) than non-mentored students.
The study will be conducted in an urban area of the southwest US. Effectively achieving this goal requires that the study adopta quasi-experimental design (Black, 1999). Particularly, a non-equivalent control group posttest-only design will be adopted in the proposed study (Black, 1999; Campbell, Stanley & Gage, 1963; Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). Study participants will include AA male students ages 11-14 years old and registered at Kappa League. The treatment group, as per the results of power analysis performed using the G*Power tool, will be comprised of all the 36 AA males already enrolled for mentoring. The control group will consist of AA males previously interviewed by Kappa League and found to be suitable for mentoring, but were placed in a waiting list to begin mentorship next year.
Research Questions
Previous research suggests that mentoring programs have positive effects on attitudinal outcomes (DuBois et al., 2011; Hall, 2006; Herrera et al., 2011). The primary concern of the proposed study is to examine the impact of mentoring on student self-perceptions significantly differs between mentored and non-mentored students. The investigation will therefore be guided by the following research questions.
Q1. What difference, if any, is there in self perceptions of academic abilities between AA males aged 11-14 who do and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Q2. What difference, if any, is there in self perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between AA males aged 11-14 who do and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Q3. What difference, if any, is there in self perceptions of global self-worth between AA males aged 11-14 who do receive and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Hypotheses (Quantitative/Mixed Studies Only)
H10 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of academic abilities between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H1a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of academic abilities between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H20 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H2a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H30 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of global self-worth perceptions between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H3a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
Nature of the Study
The proposed study will be a quantitative research that will adopt a quasi-experimental research design (Black, 1999; Campbell et al., 1963; Shadish et al.,, 2002). The participants for the study are already in two available groups, one undergoing mentoring and the other scheduled for mentoring next school year. Therefore, non-equivalent control group posttest-only design (Black, 1999; Campbell et al.,, 1963; Shadish et al., 2002), will be adopted to examine the impact of mentoring on the self-perceptions of at-risk AA middle school males ages 11 to 14. This design was determined to be the most appropriate for the study because of its ability in controlling for external events and influences that the study participants are exposed to other than the mentoring relationship (Black, 1999). However, the design is also prone to selection-maturity threat to internal validity (Trochim, 2006). The study participants in the two groups might have different rates of normal developmental processes in regard to the outcomes being investigated in this study. This might mean that the observed results may considerably be because of selection-maturity effects (Trochim, 2006). Nevertheless, the design remains the most appropriate for the study because mentoring is already taking place, meaning that pretest data cannot be collected to determine equivalence of the two groups. Having been referred to Kappa League with the same problems and having qualified for mentoring based on the same criteria, it is reasonable to believe that the two groups were somewhat equivalent on their self-perceptions before mentoring began on one group.
Study participants will be obtained from Kappa League. Self-perceptions are the most important outcomes of mentoring relationships (Dubois et al., 2011). The self-perception variables that will be investigated in this study include self-perceptions of academic abilities, college-going self-efficacy, and global self-worth. The variables will all be measured at ordinal levels using structured questionnaires that have been validated and published in previous research (Dubois et al., 1996; Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b; Harter, 1985). Data analysis will be conducted using IBM SPSS statistics version 20. Appropriate statistics will be used to compare the two groups on the three dependent variables (Siegel & Castellan, 1988).
Significance of the Study
The proposed study will have important implications for research and practice of mentoring AA males. Mentoring is increasingly becoming the chosen intervention for improving the lives of at risk children, including AA youth (Durlak, 2011; Wheeler et al., 2010; Williams & Nelson-Gardell, 2014). The proposed study is useful to policy makers and mentoring practitioners such as Kappa League. The reason is that it will determine whether community-based mentoring programs designed particularly for AA males have significant positive effects on the self-perceptions of AA males. In this light, the study will be useful to Kappa League because it will determine if it is worth to invest in mentoring programs dedicated to AA males only. For researchers, the study will add to the new body of research (e.g. Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012) which is focused on examining the effectiveness of afro-centric mentoring programs. Researchers might also consider investigating whether the observed effects of mentoring on self-perceptions reported in this study are replicated in behavioral outcomes such as academic performance, school attendance, and avoiding problem behavior.
Definition of Key Terms
At risk students. Those that are at an elevated likelihood at base rates in the population for the occurrence of some outcome (Weisz & Kazdin, 2010). Several factors that place the youth at risk include poverty, single parenthood, parental incarceration, military deployment, dangerous neighborhoods, and family violence (Big Brothers Big Sisters, 2014; Yadav, O’Reilly, & Karim, 2010).
Global self-worth. This term is synonymous with global self-esteem and refers to a person’s subjective evaluation of their worth as person (Robins, Trzesnleski & Donnellan, 2012).
Kappa League. This is the national youth initiative of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., and focuses on training male youth only, mostly those of color, at 6th -12th grade (Kappa League, 2014).
Mentorship. In this study, the term indicates structured mentoring relationship that is primarily designed to systematically develop the behavior, academic skills and leadership abilities of less-experienced members in a society (Murray & Owen, 1991).
Racial identity. Racial identity refers to “a multidimensional construct that represents individuals’ perceptions of the importance and meaning of race in their lives” (Hurd, Sanchez, Zimmerman, & Caldwell, 2012, p. 2).
Self-efficacy. This refers to an individual’s belief in the ability to complete tasks that enable them to achieve a particular goal (Schunk & Ertmer, 2012).
Self-perceptions. These refer to an individual’s appraisals of himself or herself on the basis of his or her own expectations or the expectations of significant others (Harter, 1985).
Summary
There are 4.5 million at risk American youth participating in formal mentoring programs. A significant number of these are AA males. Mentoring has emerged as a possible intervention for helping at risk children to have successful lives. There is need to evaluate the effectiveness of different mentoring programs. The primary purpose of the proposed study is to determine if the afro-centric mentoring provided at Kappa has positive effects on the self-perceptions of AA males ages 11 through 14 years old. The study will be conducted using a quasi-experimental design. The participants for the study will be obtained at Kappa League. Data will be collected at the end of mentoring from both the mentored AA males and non-mentored AA males (control group). The effects of mentoring on self-perceptions will be measured at an ordinal level. Nonparametric statistics will be used to test the hypotheses. The study will be significant to mentoring researchers and practitioners, especially those interested in afro-centric mentoring.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Previous literature suggests that AA males experience adolescence differently when compared to their white counterparts (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012; Wyat, 2010). Mentoring may be used as an intervention strategy to help at risk AA males to succeed in school, work, and life (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). The proposed quantitative study is designed to examine the effect of the afro-centric mentoring program offered at KL on AA males’ self-perceptions. The study is designed to determine if participating in the mentoring program is associated with improvements in self-perceptions of academic abilities (as measured by the scholastic subscale of Self Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985), global self-worth (as measured by the Self-Esteem Questionnaire (Dubois et al., 1996), and college-going self-efficacy (as measured by College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b) than non-mentored students. The study will be conducted in a southwest urban area.
The next sections will provide a discussion of the concept of mentoring with a view of creating an understanding of what mentoring entails. A discussion of structural settings of mentoring will follow, given that mentoring is carried out in various settings. Focus will be on the structural settings that are relevant to the American youth because the proposed study will be conducted using youth as participants. A comparison of the structural settings of mentoring will be provided. The discussion on the structural settings of mentoring will give way to review of literature on the outcomes of mentoring, with special attention being given to self-perceptions because the proposed study is focused on self-perceptions. The next section will provide a discussion of factors that influence or mediate the outcomes of mentoring, before turning to mentoring among AA youth. This will include a discussion on racial identity and its relationship with mentoring and mentoring outcomes such as educational attainment. Mentoring has a number of challenges that deserve to be examined in this chapter.
Documentation
The literature reviewed in this chapter was searched systematically from various databases and relevant journals. The search was limited to all publications published in the last five years, and in English. Education Research Complete, ERIC, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, Google are the databases used to locate the literature reviewed. The search was performed using search phrases, which were joined by Boolean operators. Some search phrases used were mentoring at risk youth, mentoring at risk African American, and impact of mentoring on at risk youth. The Boolean operators used were “AND” or “OR”. If the search returned too many sources, more key words, or even different key words, were used to narrow the results. If the search returned no results or too few results, broader search terms were used to get all relevant results. The results of the search were scanned for relevance. Some sources were dropped upon reviewing their abstracts as they were determined to be irrelevant to the proposed study. In addition, the reference lists of the sources that were found to be relevant were scanned to determine if there were relevant studies that could be retrieved.
Understanding Mentoring
In typical mentoring program, each youth is matched with a volunteer from their community, with a view of establishing a relationship that will enhance the youth’s positive development and well-being (Dubois et al., 2011; Karcher & Nakkula, 2010). Mentoring can also provide an opportunity for a student to select a particular person as one’s mentor since some mentoring programs typically incorporate the freedom of choice for the student (Khazanov, 2011). Mentoring programs are often designed to serve children perceived to be at risk of poor outcomes in domains such as academics, health, and risk behavior (Tolan, Henry, Schoeny, Lovegrove & Nichols, 2014; Williams, 2011). Mentoring helps students get better grades, establish achievable goals, and improve their self-esteem when they are matched with caring, supportive adults (Liang, Spencer, West & Rappaport, 2013). Mentors act as positive and influential persons to the youth at risk (Williams, 2011). An effective mentoring relationship keeps the at risk child away from trouble, encourage at risk children, and provide role models for desirable positive behaviors for the child to seek to imitate (Kearney & Graczyk, 2014; Liang et al., 2013; Tolan et al., 2014). The essence of a mentoring relationship is to “provide guidance, pass on knowledge, share experience, provide a background for more sound judgment, and establish friendship” (Lampley & Johnson, 2010, p. 4).
There is no agreed definition of mentoring. Consequently, mentoring relationships have attracted various definitions (e.g. Black et al., 2010; Chan et al., 2013; Keller, 2010). Keller (2010) argued that mentoring relationships should be defined to incorporate a broad range of relationships on the basis of context, population, and developmental period of the mentee (Keller, 2010). Black et al. (2010) agreed with Keller (2010) that mentoring relationships should be defined broadly; but they differed in the kind of elements that should inform the definition. Black and colleagues argued that a definition of mentoring relationships should: 1) show that it occurs over time between a mentor and a mentee; 2) consist of an emotional bond; 3) function as a resource for support (Black et al., 2010). Similarly, Zimmerman (2010) observed that support, guidance, and encouragement are key elements of mentoring relationships (Zimmerman, 2010). The complex nature of mentoring programs is enhanced by the fact that mentors may assume different roles in the mentoring relationships while others may focus on some areas of importance to the youth and ignore other areas (Keller, 2010).
However, all definitions of mentoring acknowledge that the mentor should be older, more experienced, and more knowledgeable (Black et al., 2010; Chan et al., 2013; Eby et al., 2011; Griffin & Reddick, 2011; Keller, 2010). Mentors should easily build rapport and maintain the relationships forged with the student for the establishment of life-long survival skills in the mentee (Griffin & Reddick, 2011). Youth mentoring is grounded in the premise that supportive and caring adult relationships are useful for personal, emotional, cognitive and psychological growth for the at-risk youth (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014; Cumming-Potvin & MacCallum, 2010; Eby et al., 2011; Keller, 2010;). During mentoring relationships, a mentor guides and supports the youth in various spheres of life including academics, social interactions, career planning and decision-making (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014; Eby et al., 2011). In this study, mentoring is defined as a “trusting relationship between a young person and an older, more experienced non-parental figure who provides guidance, support, and encouragement to the mentee” (Chan et al., 2013, p. 1-2).
Structural Settings of Youth Mentoring
Youth mentoring relations develop simultaneously or with the help of others. Informal mentoring programs may develop among youth and religious leaders, family, and friends, teachers, and relatives (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Black et al. (2010) have argued that naturally occurring mentoring programs may be helpful to adolescents. However, youth from disadvantaged backgrounds and neighborhoods may be unable to get informal mentors and role models. This situation has necessitated the emergence and growth of formal mentoring programs such as Kappa League and Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program (Herrera et al., 2011). Formal youth mentoring programs are on-site intervention programs and community-based efforts. They rely on systematic approach to help at-risk youth and volunteer mentors build and develop beneficial mentoring relationships. They typically employ evidence-based best practices to match volunteer mentors and at-risk mentees for the best possible opportunity to create a rewarding mentoring relationship (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010; Eby et al., 2013).
The on-site interventions are site-restricted and may include school-based, church-based, work-based, and agency-based mentoring programs. However, community-based youth mentoring programs are flexible in terms of context including location (Eby et al., 2011). For students, school-based and community based mentoring is common (Eby et al., 2013; Gordon et al., 2009; Hall & Jaugietis, 2011; Herrera et al., 2011). To determine whether mentoring should take place in the school grounds or in the community-setting, considerations are made for factors such as funding, availability of the site, and the goals of the mentoring program. For example, a mentoring program that is primarily focused on academic-related goals may best be conducted in a school setting. There are two broad categories of mentoring programs: community-based and school-based mentoring programs.
Community-based mentoring programs are designed by churches, fraternities, and other community organizations and in which matches meet in community settings (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Family members and schools refer youth whom they believe can benefit from additional support and guidance to community-based mentoring programs. Trained mentors are allowed to engage in unsupervised activities with the youth during mentoring. Volunteers must pass a through-background check, face-to-face interviews, and take part in orientation and training programs. Mentors normally come from community agencies, universities, and business corporations. Mentors and mentees independently arrange for activities within the guidelines provided by organizations they are affiliated to (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). In community-based mentoring programs, mentors tend to be attached more to the mentees than mentors in school-based mentoring programs (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). The reason is that unlike school-based mentoring that may focus heavily on academic success, community-based mentoring focuses on various social activities that build and develop close bonds between the mentors and their protégés (Rhodes, Schwartz, Willis, & Wu, 2014). The mentor and the youth decide on the time, place, and frequency of their meetings. The frequency may range from once a month to one hour every week. The meetings take place in community-settings such as the parks and movie theaters (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010).
School-based mentoring, on the other hand, takes place on school grounds and lasts for about an hour every week (Chan et al., 2012). It matches meet during lunch hours or after the school during a school year (Chan et al., 2012). School-based mentoring is the most common and the fastest growing formal approach to youth mentoring in the US (Chan et al., 2012; Grossman, Chan. Schwartz, & Rhodes, 2012). There are hundreds of thousands of youth at-risk participating in school-based mentoring programs in the US (Chan et al., 2012). During the mentor-youth meetings, the matches together engage in various activities such as playing games, talking, and academic-related activities like reading or homework (Chan et al., 2012). School-based mentors take part in pre-match screening, orientation, and training. In addition, the mentors are required to meet with their mentees every week. Many studies indicate the positive effects of mentorship when applied to an academic situation; particularly in improving academic achievement and global self-worth students (DuBois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Phinney et al., 2011; Radcliff & Bos, 2011; Wyat, 2009). Academic mentors are assigned to students who have already displayed a deficiency in their schoolwork and are at risk of dropping out (Crisp, 2010; Wyat, 2009).
Conducting mentorships in school-based situations also creates the chance for cross-cultural interactions that help break the illusion that the mentored student is the only one in such a situation (Grant & Dieker, 2011). Many tutors embark on assigned projects together with their students to give them a sense of inclusion and cement the mentorship bond (Strayhorn, 2012). School-based mentoring programs have some key advantages compared to community-based mentoring programs (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). First, school-based programs are often cheaper-about 50% cheaper-compared to other mentoring programs such as community-based programs. The cost of school-based mentoring is even lower when the value of in-kind school contribution is taken into account (Rhodes et al., 2014). Second, schools are better placed to capitalize on the knowledge, referrals, supervision, and support of many adult mentors who are already part of the school. This situation simplifies the role of the mentoring staff in forming and monitoring mentoring relationships. The situation also leads to improved academic performance and desirable relationships with teachers. Third, school-based mentoring programs attract volunteers who would not have otherwise volunteered in community-based mentoring programs because of issues related to job, families, age, or other circumstances. Fourth, meetings between the mentor and the protégé take place within the school and therefore allay fears about security concerns (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010; Rhodes et al., 2014).
However, school-based mentoring programs are associated with some challenges and risks (Mboka, 2012; Rhodes et al., 2014). For instance, school-based programs are linked to the school year. As a result, many mentoring relationships are suspended or even terminated during summer months. This may negatively influence the benefits to be accrued from mentoring because such benefits tend to accrue with time. This may explain why the benefits of school-based mentoring programs do not remain consistent in the second year (Herrera et al., 2011). In addition, mentor-mentee relationships in school-based mentoring seem to be less intensive. In particular, school-based mentors spend about half the time spend by community-based mentors with their mentees (Rhodes et al., 2014). In addition, school structures may constrain the intensity and scope of mentor-mentee meetings, which is not the case in community-based meetings (Mboka, 2012; Rhodes et al., 2014). Another risk is that some youth may be unable to reveal some issues within school premises. Furthermore, school-based mentoring may mostly focus on academics at the expense of social dimensions of mentoring which help in fostering better relationships and perceptions (Rhodes et al., 2014). This may explain why Herrera and colleagues reported improvements in academic performance and self-perceptions of academic abilities, but found no improvement in self-perceptions of global self-worth, rates of problem behavior, and relationship with parents (Herrera et al., 2011).
Although the main difference between school-based and community-based mentoring programs is that the former takes place in schools while the latter takes place in the community outside the school, other key differences can be noted (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). School-based mentoring programs tend to serve preventative purposes. Community-based programs, on their part, tend to include youth who have been excluded from school and may have more severe difficulties. However, there are still many community-based mentoring programs, which serve preventative purposes and therefore involve students who are still in school but are considered to be at-risk (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). In addition, the two types of mentoring programs differ in terms of mentor-training, monitoring, and supervision (Rhodes et al., 2014). Furthermore, school-based mentoring, unlike community-based mentoring, tends to help students who have academic and/or behavioral difficulties in the school. Consequently, school-based mentoring programs tend to focus on academic performance of the student than community-based mentoring relationships. The implication of these differences is that care should be taken when generalizing findings of research on one program to the other (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Moreover, mentors in school-based mentoring programs tend to have diverse demographics compared to those in community-based mentoring programs (Grossman et al., 2012).
Models of Youth Mentoring
Although the effect of mentoring on youth has been extensively studied, little has been done to provide a solid theoretical framework to show how mentoring assists at-risk youth (Keller, 2013). Nevertheless, two models have been suggested as crucial in explaining how mentoring might help at-risk students (Black, Grenard, Sussman, & Rohrbach, 2010). They include the social development model, and the model of youth mentoring.
Social development model (SDM). SDM brings together theories of control, social learning and attachment to explain how mentoring relationships influence behavior (Hawkins & Weis, 1985). Under this model, social institutions such as family, schools, peers, and community influence youth behavior in a sequential manner (Hawkins & Weis, 1985). SDM holds that when adolescents are committed to pursuing prosocial goals, they will be less likely to have interactions with delinquent peers. The youth need to have opportunities within each of the social institutions for positive socialization by being involved in conforming activities (Hawkins & Weis, 1985).
In this light, SDM suggests that prosocial commitments protect adolescents against learned behavior (Hawkins & Weis, 1985).. Mentoring allows for modeling of prosocial behaviors that the mentor performs (Black et al., 2010). However, the model does not address the complexities associated with vital features defining the youth (Keller, 2010). For instance, based on the youth’s level of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development, the mentoring relationship might have different outcome making it difficult to predict how mentoring may prevent negative behaviors among the youth. As the youth develops in complexity on the basis of social, cognitive, physical, and emotional aspects, the mentor has to adjust, which may be challenging (Keller, 2010).
Model of youth mentoring (MYM). MYM appears to be a more preferable model, and as such has received more attention from scholars. MYM holds that mentoring relationships might be of significant and lasting value for the youth (Dubois et al., 2012; Rhodes, 2002). Additionally, the model posits that there have to be prerequisite conditions for the benefits of mentoring to be realized as well as the processes through which the benefits of mentoring relationships are most likely to be realized. According to MYM, mentoring relationships produce positive effects on specific domains of youth development such as socio-emotional, cognitive development, and identity development, which in turn prevents risk behavior (Black et al., 2010). Figure 1 shows the conceptual model of MYM. The conceptual model places emphasis on the importance of strong and meaningful personal connection to be established between the youth and the mentor. This emphasis is consistent with research on the importance of emotional attachment and support in both mentoring relationships and youth relationships with parents and other adults such as teachers. However, a close connection might be a result of effective mentoring relationship for youth rather than a focus. For instance, young people might learn to appreciate and trust their mentors while working on goal-oriented tasks (Hamilton & Hamilton, 2010). It is argued that primarily focusing mentoring efforts on developing emotional connections with the youth should be observed (Dubois et al., 2012).
In the model shown in Figure 1, a string and meaningful personal connection is established between the youth and the mentor. A positive interpersonal foundation is believed to accelerate socio-emotional, cognitive, and identity developmental processes. It assumed that the three domains work in concert over time. Positive social-emotional experiences that the youth experience while in mentoring relationships with their mentors are generalizable, and might therefore make the youth interact favorably with their peers and parents. These relationships might in turn mediate how social-emotional development gains affect the positive outcomes of mentoring. The quality of the mentoring relationship and its connections to the positive outcomes on the youth might be affected by several factors including youth’s interpersonal history, developmental stage, social competence, program practices, mentoring duration, youth’s family, and surrounding community (Dubois et al., 2011).
As already noted, a positive interpersonal foundation facilitates interaction of developmental processes in three domains including social-emotional, cognitive, and identity (Rhodes, 2002). Social-emotional is influenced in several ways. For example, by cultivating care and providing support, mentoring might challenge the youth’s negative perceptions about themselves (Durlak et al., 2011; Karen et al., 2012). They might also come to learn that it is possible to have positive and rewarding relationships with adults, especially if the youth has had negative experiences with adults in their life, such as parents and teachers (Jackson, 2014; Tillery, Varjas, Roach, Kuperminc, & Meyers, 2013). In this light, mentoring seems to serve as a “corrective experience” for young people who have had negative and unsatisfactory relationships with their caregivers or parents and other adults such as teachers (Rhodes, 2002). Moreover, when they act as model of effective adult communication, mentors enhance the youth’s understanding, expression, and regulation of their emotions. (Dubois et al., 2011; Jackson, 2014; Karen, 2012). In this light, mentors help the youth cope with situations and perceive negative experiences as learning and growth opportunities. These observations explain why mentoring has been associated with improved relationships between the youth and their parents, peers, and other adults (Durlak et al., 2011; Eby et al., 2013; Karen, 2012).
Mentoring might also have positive effects on the developmental processes within the cognitive domain (Rhodes, 2002). Moreover, when they act as model of effective adult communication, mentors enhance the youth’s understanding, expression, and regulation of their emotions (Dubois et al., 2011; Jackson, 2014; Karen, 2012). In this light, mentors help the youth cope with situations and perceive negative experiences as learning and growth opportunities. These observations explain why mentoring has been associated with improved relationships between the youth and their parents, peers, and other adults (Durlak et al., 2011; Eby et al., 2013; Karen, 2012).
Rhodes (2002) observations is consistent with Vygotsky’s theory of social cognitive development and Bandura’s social learning theory, which both hold that full cognitive development requires social interaction (Druica, 2012). Research conducted in cooperative or collaborative learning indicates that interactions between the youth and the mentor that occur during mentoring are tools for acquiring and refining new thinking skills among the youth (Chambers, 2014; Smith, 2013). Chambers (2014) has described the mentor as a catalyst for the development of knowledge in reflection thinking, cognitive development and problem solving capabilities. Similarly, Smith (2013) stressed that mentoring enhances intellectual development through role modeling. This enables the youth to become more positive about adult life and the values associated with it. Similarly, research on the role of social support in enhancing cognitive development has concluded that social engagement is associated with enhanced cognitive functioning (Chodzko-Zajko, Kramer & Poon, 2010). Mentors have to understand the cognitive levels of their mentees in to be able to mentor them effectively (Smith, 2013).
Further, mentoring relationships foster the development of the youth’s identity (Rhodes, 2002). Mentoring might help in shifting the youth’s perceptions about their present and future identities (Rhodes, 2002). Consistent with Rhodes (2002) research on mentoring AA youth (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012; Spencer, 2013) consistently shows that mentoring shapes the identity of AA youth by equipping them with appropriate knowledge about related AA cultural and racial issues. Mentoring enhances the youth’s individual ideas on what they might become or want to become, and what they would not wish to become (Dubois et al., 2011). Youth normally make conclusions from observations and comparisons they make concerning adults they know, which they use to shape their identity (Smith, 2013). Mentoring relationships might expose the youth to activities, resources, and educational opportunities which the youth can rely on in constructing their identity (Dubois et al., 2011). In agreement with Dubois et al. (2011), T. Gullotta and colleagues observed that mentoring relationships enhance development of identity through positive role models, dialogue, and listening (T. Gullotta, Blloom & C. Glullotta, 2010).
A key strength of MYM is that it is specific to youth mentoring. This should be viewed as an important strength of the model because mentoring in children and adults is significantly different (Dubois et al., 2011). A second, strength of the model is that it recognizes the input of other players in the youth’s life who might not be involved in the formal mentoring. These include parents, peers, and the community. These issues underline the relevance of the MYM in understanding youth mentoring (Keller, 2010).
Outcomes of Youth Mentoring on the Youth
There is a huge body of evaluation literature (reviews, program evaluations, and meta-analyses) on the effectiveness of mentoring relationships (Dubois et al., 2011; Durlak et al., 2011; Eby et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013; Wheeler et al., 2010; Thomson & Zand, 2010). Youth mentoring is believed to hold a significant potential for a variety of outcomes including behavioral, health-related, relational, motivational, and attitudinal (Chan et al., 2011; Dubois et al., 2011; Eby et al., 2009; Karcher & Nakkula, 2010; Karen, 2012).
Relational outcomes. Mentoring is believed to hold a great potential in fostering interpersonal relationships with siblings, parents, and peers (Eby et al., 2013). The findings reported by Durlak et al. (2011) and Hickman and Wright (2011) were consistent with those of Karen (2012) who found that mentoring has positive effects on at risk youth transitioning to high school. Following a quasi-experimental study, Karen (2012) found that school-based mentoring holds a great potential for enhancing socio-emotional competencies of the at risk youth in grades 9 and 10. Karen (2012) also found that mentoring might protect at risk youth against problem behavior. These findings are consistent with the results of a meta-analysis conducted by Durlak et al. (2011). Durlak et al. (2013) found that students who participated in SEL had significantly enhanced social and emotional skills. The findings confirmed results of an earlier evaluation of the BBBS mentoring program (Herrera et al., 2007). Herrera et al. (2007) reported improved relationships with non-parental adults, and lower involvement in serious school-related misconduct and truancy. However, the findings on relationships were not supported in a subsequent evaluation (Herrera et al., 2011). Herrera et al. (2011) did not find a significant effect of mentoring on the students’ relationships with peers and adults. Similar results were reported following the evaluation of the US Department of Education’s Student Mentoring Program (Bernstein et al., 2009). Bernstein et al. (2009) did not find statistically significant mentoring effects on the youth’s problem behavior and prosocial behavior. Similarly, results of the Communities In Schools of San Antonio, Texas (Karcher, 2008) concluded that multi-component school-based mentoring programs might have limited value to schools. However, the mentoring model might be helpful to young boys (in elementary school) and older girls (Karcher et al., 2008).
Motivational outcomes. Motivational outcomes of mentoring are concerned with motivation or involvement. Mentoring relationships might have important effects on the motivation and involvement of the youth (Eby et al., 2013). For example, issues such as time spent on educational pursuits, and number of hours a student spends doing homework are motivational outcomes (Eby et al., 2013). Mentoring relationships provide the youth with role modeling, which exposes the youth to educational and social opportunities (Spencer, 2010). Herrera et al. (2007) reported that the mentored youth reported having a special adult model in their life, which implies that school-based mentoring might be an efficient way of increasing the number of useful adult relationships among children. These opportunities might enlighten the youth about different possibilities and motivate them to search for new experiences. Moreover, motivation of the youth could be improved by helping the youth set realistic goals and realize outcomes relevant to their lives (Ramaswami & Dreher, 2010). Furthermore, mentors assist the youth to stay focused on useful tasks and steer them away from activities they consider to be superfluous (Bearman, Blake-Beard, Hunt, & Crosby, 2010; Eby et al., 2013).
Health-related outcomes. These are related to substance use (e.g. use of alcohol and drugs), psychological stress and strain (e.g. depression, pessimism) (Eby et al., 2013; Hurd & Zimmerman, 2014). Mentoring allows the youth to get emotional and social support from mentors, which is associated with psychological well-being (Herrera et al., 2013; Hurd & Zimmerman, 2014). Mentors might also foster overall well-being of the youth by challenging their negative views on themselves, and subsequently improve the youth’s self-confidence or self-esteem (Eby et al., 2013; Herrera et al., 2013). Mentoring relationships might give the youth opportunities and encouragement to participate in physical activities and seek medical health if in need, which enhances their health (Hurd & Zimmerman, 2014).
Behavioral outcomes. Behavioral outcomes are associated with performance (e.g. academic performance), withdrawal behavior (e.g. school dropout, absences, skipping school), and deviance (suspensions and expulsions from school, aggressive behavior) (Eby et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2013). Mentoring focused on behavioral outcomes is intended to increase desirable behavior and decrease undesirable behavior. Formal mentoring programs for youth target at risk children in order to deter negative outcomes such as school dropout, academic failure, drug use, and teen pregnancy. While doing this, formal mentoring programs hope to encourage alternative positive behaviors among the at risk youth (Eby et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2013). In most cases, students do not fail in academics because of the child’s lack of cognitive skills. Instead, academic failure frequently results from weak non-cognitive skills (for example, self esteem, motivation, tenacity, trustworthiness, and perseverance) and personal, family and social barriers that make it difficult for the student to remain in school and perform better (Rodríguez-Planas, 2010). From a psychological viewpoint, building strong relationships between the youth and non-parental adults enhances resiliency. The reason is that mentoring fosters the youth’s capacity to gain from the support provided by mentors and parents as well improving the youth’s perceptions of their worth and competences (Rodríguez-Planas, 2010).
Mentoring has been found to have positive effects on the educational performance of the at risk youth (Hickman & Wright, 2011). These educational outcomes include academic performance, school persistence, and classroom efforts, assignment completion. These findings are consistent with results of a meta-analysis conducted by Durlak et al. (2011). Durlak and colleagues found that youth who participated in school-based, universal social-emotional learning programs (SEL) had better academic performance compared to controls. Herrera et al. (2007) reported similar results after evaluating BBBS mentoring program. They reported better teacher-reported academic performance, better quality class work, and higher number of completed assignments (Herrera et al., 2007). In a subsequent randomized controlled trial in which the matches were followed for one and half school years, important academic benefits were reported unlike in the non-mentored group. Teacher-reported academic performance improved in the mentored group (Herrera et al., 2011). However, the academic improvements observed in the first five months (first school year) were not observed in the second half. The findings were consistent with those of Thomson and Zand (2010) who found that better mentoring outcomes were observed in the first nine months but were not observed after 16 months. The implications are that the benefits of mentoring relationships lasting for one school year might diminish immediately after leaving the program. However, it is important to note that the study suffered from significant attrition. Attrition was so serious that the final sample did not include the neediest students depending on academic performance. This indicates that the findings of the study might only hold true for the academically able students but not those who are struggling academically (Herrera et al., 2011). However, results of the US Department of Education’s Student Mentoring Program (Bernstein et al., 2009), did not find statistically significant mentoring effects on the youth’s academic achievement.
Attitudinal and self-perception outcomes. Attitudinal outcomes are concerned with situational satisfaction and attachment (e.g. satisfaction with academic experience) and school attitudes such as attitude toward school, and perceived value of school (Eby et al., 2013; Herrera et al., 2013). Mentoring has an important role to play in improving self-concept of at-risk youth (Eby et al., 2013; Holloway, 2009; Leake et al., 2011). Self-perceptions might include self-worth, self-efficacy, and self-reports of scholastic competence (Eby et al., 2013; Herrera et al., 2013). It is assumed that the youth develops positive toward the activities that they engage in with their mentors during mentoring relationships. In addition, having a mentor might strengthen psychological attachment to the context where the mentoring relationship is embedded. The most powerful impact of mentoring is said to be improving perceptional outcomes than any kind of improvements such as behavioral (Dubois et al., 2011;). Studies have reported positive attitudinal changes in academic self-perceptions, global self-worth perceptions, and college-going perceptions among students (Wyat, 2009). The proposed study is particularly focused on self-perceptions and as such a review of literature on the constructs of interest to the proposed study is provided.
Previous research (e.g. Grossman et al., 2012; Herrera et al., 2011) shows that mentoring benefits at-risk students academically through improvement in their academic self-perceptions. Students who are mentored improve their perceptions of their academic competences as well as their attitudes toward school (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Mentoring enhances the student’s belief that he or she belong in college, and possess the required knowledge, skills, and abilities to meet the requirements for qualifying for college and staying in college (Crisp, 2010; Wyat, 2009). Positive self-beliefs about academic abilities and school predict future academic achievement. For instance, academic self-concept of school-age children may predict educational attainment ten years later (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Academic self-concept is associated with future educational attainment of those students (Niepel et al., 2014; Seaton et al., 2014). This indicates that mentoring, which enhances academic self-concept, may be associated with students’ future educational attainment (Britner &Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010).
Following the evaluation of BBBS, it was found that the youth’s self-perceptions of academic abilities improved in the mentored group compared to the non-mentored group (Herrera et al., 2011). The findings confirmed results of the earlier evaluation of the same mentoring program. Herrera et al. (2007) reported improved perceptions of scholastic efficacy. Consisted with these findings, Eby et al. (2008) reported that they observed the largest impacts of mentoring in enhancing school attitudes and perceived value for schools. In addition, a meta-analysis by Dubois et al. (2002) reported significantly high improvements in school attitudes among mentored youth. However, these studies (Dubois et al., 2002; Eby et al., 2008; Herrera et al., 2011) were not particularly focused on AA middle school males. It has been argued that in order to understand the effects of mentoring more clearly, it is necessary to design mentoring programs centered on the cultural aspects of the youth to be mentored (Gordon et al., 2009). In this respect, Gordon and colleagues conducted a study on AA 8th grade males to investigate the impact of an afro-centric mentoring program. Gordon et al. (2009 found that mentored students more positive and higher identification with academic success than students who did not participate in the mentoring program. However, students were not randomly assigned to the groups and therefore those in the Benjamin E. Mays Institute mentoring program might have been academically motivated (Gordon et al., 2009).
Mentoring relationships are associated with improved self-esteem on the part of the mentee (Feldman, Arean, Marshall, Lovett, & O’Sullivan, 2010; Holloway, 2009). The findings have been consistent across studies conducted within different levels of academic institutions. For instance, Feldman et al. (2010) found that mentored faculty mentees at the University of California, San Francisco had statistically significantly higher levels of self-esteem compared non-mentored youth. Holloway (2009) found that mentorship has a positive effect on the individual’s sense of self-worth in 38 of the 40 participants who were mentored as compared to only 1 in the non-mentored group. Although these results indicate its applicability in such situations, the results did not indicate significant changes in their academic outcomes when comparing mentored students to the non-mentored group. Significant increases in self-esteem and individual view of self-worth were only present in students who were effectively mentored as compared to those who received basic mentorship (Holloway, 2009). This suggests that there is a need to streamline the mentorship relationships to ensure that both parties involved are properly invested in it for the program to succeed. Another study found that the self-confidence of a young at-risk student is closely tied to their performance and mentorship-side interventions boost their self-esteem when they see their results improve (Dappen & Isenhagen, 2009). However, Herrera et al. (2011) did not find a significant effect of mentoring on the students’ global self-esteem.
A few studies that have examined the impact of mentoring on college-going self-perceptions (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010; Radcliffe & Bos, 2011) suggest that mentoring improves college-going perceptions. Mentoring programs such as college field-trips, career investigations, and presentation about preparation for college and life have positive effects on college-going self-perceptions. Positive academic experiences and academic self-perceptions are associated with college-going perceptions. In addition, anecdotal evidence shows that mentoring enhances college-going self-perceptions (Raheim, 2010). For instance, writing on her own experiences, Raheim (2010) reported that mentoring in her high school focused on expanding her understanding of education from high school to include attending college. Raheim says she found the idea of joining college fascinating; and her mentors helped work towards going to college (Raheim, 2010). In regard to college going, there is little research investigating the impact of mentoring on college going.
Factors Influencing Youth Mentoring Outcomes
Questions have been raised concerning the conditions that should be provided in order to optimize benefits of youth mentoring to the at risk youth (Dubois et al., 2011; Zilberstein & Spencer, 2014). In this light, mentoring research has identified several factors that account for variations in the effectiveness of mentoring programs (e.g. Herrera et al., 2011; Schwartz et al., 2010; Thomson & Zand, 2010). These factors might explain why youth benefit differently from mentoring programs (Schwartz et al., 2010). The factors also show why some mentoring programs might be effective while others might be ineffective (Thomson & Zand, 2010). The conceptual model shown in Figure 1 indicates that the quality of mentoring relationships between the youth and the mentor and the pathways linking them are subject to a number of factors. These factors are related to the youth’s interpersonal history, developmental stage, social competence, duration of the mentoring relationship, program practices and its duration, and the youth’s family and the surrounding community, Both research and theory suggest that there are specific factors within these areas that influence mentoring relationships and their outcomes.
Developmental stage. This domain is concerned with the youth’s age (Rhodes, 2002). Research has mostly divided age into four groups consisting of those aged below eight years, those aged eight through ten years old, those aged eleven through fourteen years old, and those aged fifteen through 18 years old. Although some studies show that age does not significantly affect outcomes of mentoring, most of the studies show that age significantly affects mentoring outcomes among the youth. On one hand, Kolar and McBride (2011) found that age of the child did not have a significant effect on the impact of mentoring on academic-related variables such as grades and psychological-related youth outcomes such as likeness for school, better classroom behavior, better relationships with peers, and increased self-esteem. On the other hand, several studies (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Thomson & Zand, 2010) have reported that the developmental stage of the youth might affect capacity and willingness of the youth to establish and develop close links with nonparent adults assigned as mentors. Research shows that younger adolescents are more likely to have better relationships and disclosure with adults compared to older youth (Thomson & Zand, 2010). Young youth tend to have more lasting connections with mentors assigned to them than their older counterparts. Thomson and Zand (2010) found that younger youth had better relationships and more disclosures with adults than their older counterparts. In addition, younger adolescents tend to have more lasting relationships with mentors compared to the older adolescents (Thomson & Zand, 2010). Hickman and Wright (2011) found that an increase in age when starting a mentoring program was associated with an increase in the odds of graduating from high school.
Similarly, Herrera and colleagues reported that age appeared to have an effect on classroom effort after 15 months of mentoring relationship. They found that older youth had less classroom effort compared to their young counterparts (Herrera et al., 2011). The reason might be that older youth are increasingly asserting their autonomy and independence (Dubois et al., 2012). The older youth want to be autonomous and independent, and therefore limit the extent to which they relate with mentors. Additionally, older adolescents may also find that they have to attend to other relationships, especially romantic and peer relationships, which would reduce the time spent in mentoring relationships (Schwartz et al., 2010). There is also a possibility that as the age increases, it associated with an increase in the youth’s motivation and practical need for specific skills, competencies, and capacity to undertake in deep reflection and accomplish personal growth. However, it is not clear whether younger youth have the requisite cognitive and social abilities and understandings to gain the benefits of mentoring relationships in the same way older youth do.
Duration of relationship. Duration of mentoring relationships has significant effects on variations in the effects of mentoring (Chan et al., 2012; Dubois et al., 2011; Gettings & Wilson, 2014; Grossman et al., 2012; Hurd & Zimmerman, 2014; Schwartz, Lowe, & Rhodes, 2013; Thomson & Zand, 2010). Duration involves the overall length and duration relative to program expectations/mentor commitment. Duration is associated with close relationships and strong programs (Gettings & Wilson, 2014; Grossman et al., 2012). Grossman et al. (2012) argued that “it is not simply the presence or absence of a mentor that makes a difference, but the longetivity of matches” (p. 53). There appears to be no agreed length of mentoring relationships, although previous research provides findings that might be used to determine appropriate mentoring duration. However, Slack and colleagues found that 28% of the teacher mentors met with their students for less than 5 minutes, with only 23% meeting for more than 30 minutes (Slack, Johnson, Dodor, & Woods, 2013). Majority of the mentoring relationships (38%) lasted 10-14 minutes (Slack et al., 2013). Research has mostly focused on average length of mentoring relationships and rate at which mentoring relationships have met minimal duration requirements and how that has affected the quality of mentoring relationships and their outcomes.
Previous research shows that more benefits are realized when the youth experiences longer-term relationships with their mentors (Dubois et al., 2011; Grossman et al., 2012; Hurd & Zimmerman, 2014; Schwartz et al., 2013). Dubois et al. (2011), in their review of literature, found that youth outcomes were more improved if the BBBSA community-based mentoring program relationships persistent for longer time periods. However, mentoring relationships that ended in less than three months were associated with declines in areas of functioning such as self-esteem among the youth in the intervention group relative to the control group youth. Similarly, Schwartz et al. (2013) found that enduring relationships were associated with improvements in self-esteem. The findings place emphasis of the importance of having mentoring relationships with more enduring ties between the youth and the mentor (Schwartz et al., 2013). Another angle in the question of duration relates to the consideration whether the program-specific timeframe is accomplished or not. In this light, it is important to determine whether a mentoring relationship has continued for the full duration allocated for the mentoring program (Dubois et al., 2011).
Consistent with Dubois et al. (2011) and Schwartz et al. (2013), Britner and Kraimer-Rickaby (2010)found that the benefits derived from mentoring relationships increase progressively as the relationship lasts. The effects of mentoring on the youth become progressively stronger while the relationships persist for length durations. Consistent with these observations, Grossman et al. (2012) found that relationships that do not go beyond three months do produce weak effects in youth outcomes while relationships that last for a year or more produce the largest benefits. In particular, the frequency of contact, emotional closeness, and longevity are predictors of enhanced positive outcomes among mentored youth. In community-based mentoring programs, multiple mentor-youth meetings per week are associated with more positive outcomes than less frequent mentor-youth meetings (Grossman et al., 2012).
There is a possibility that the benefits of mentoring are realized only in the first school year but are not sustained into the second year. The reason is that two studies (Herrera et al., 2011; Kolar & McBride, 2011; Thomson & Zand, 2010) reported similar findings on the effect of mentoring after 9 months (one school year) and 15 months (1.5 school years). In the first 9 months, the two studies reported significance effects on outcomes related to academics (Herrera et al., 2011) and quality of mentoring relations (Thomson & Zand, 2010). Kolar and McBride (2011) reported findings consistent with those of Herrera et al. (2011) and Thomson & Zand (2010) on the effect of mentoring relation length on the outcomes of mentoring. They did not find statistically significant effects of length of the match on youth outcomes. However, they concluded that matches lasting for a relatively short duration might have crucial effects on the mentroign relationships involving at-risk child (Kolar & McBride, 2011). Herrera and colleagues speculated that disruptions associated with summer months and mentoring time lost at the beginning of the school year might have resulted into the loss of the benefits accrued from mentoring in the course of the first school year. The reason might be that long-term, lasting effects on the students’ academic performance might be associated with more fundamental changes that do not occur in an average youth within one year of mentoring relationship. The findings highlighted the need for additional research to investigate how mentoring works in order to do evidence-based program designing for mentoring programs.
Some researchers have identified factors that might predict the length of mentoring relationships. The factors include type of mentor, focus of the mentoring program, and youth characteristics (Grossman et al., 2012; Hickman & Wright, 2011). Grossman et al. (2012) found that mentoring relationships with college students as mentors were likely to terminate prematurely. They argued that the “unpredictable schedules and transitory nature of college students” might best explain why mentoring relationships with college students as mentors might end prematurely. It is also possible that some college students might enter mentoring relationships with egoistic motivations and negative biases about the youth, while others might be less prepared for the mentoring role. However, they found that mentoring relationships in which the mentor had a previous experience in mentoring were likely to last (Grossman et al., 2012). This is reasonable because experienced mentors will most likely have realistic expectations of what the mentoring experiences will entail. The finding highlighted the importance of recruiting volunteers with a background in support roles.
The focus of a mentoring program might be associated with the duration of mentoring relationships (Gettings & Wilson, 2014; Grossman et al., 2012). Grossman and colleagues found that if mentoring relationships were primarily focused on academics, they were 43% less likely to last. The reason was that academically-focused mentoring relationships lacked flexibility. There were no flexibility in terms of meeting time and place. Moreover, having academically-focused mentoring relationships might influence the mentor to interact with the youth in a manner that focuses on academics and ignores other aspects of the child. This means that the mentor might be less responsive to the child’s other developmental needs (Grossman et al., 2012).
Some youth demographics predict remaining in intact relationships while others do not. Mentoring relationships that had youths with previous high exposure to stressors had a less likelihood of remaining in intact matches. However, youths who joined mentoring while being highly sensitive to rejection had a higher likelihood of remaining in intact relationships (Grossman et al., 2012). However, other youth characteristics such as gender, race/ethnicity, and age did not have a significant effect on whether the youth would remain in an intact relationship (Grossman et al., 2012). However, the research used data from BBBS which limits its ability to generalized (Grossman et al., 2012). The findings reported by Grossman and colleagues are contrary to those reported by Hickman and Wright (2011). Hickman and Wright (2011) reported that for at risk youth, an increase in age when starting a mentoring program was associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of completing the mentoring program.
School related factors such as GPA and grade retention also predicted remaining in the mentoring program (Hickman & Wright, 2011). A unit increase in GPA was associated with an increase of 348% in the odds of completing the mentoring program and graduating from high school. Additionally, a unit increase in grade retention was associated with a 99% decrease in the odds of completing the program and graduating from high school. However, they found that proficiency tests and school expulsions did not have significant effect on completing a mentoring program and graduating from high school (Hickman & Wright, 2011). A key limitation of Hickman and Wright (2011) study was that the manner in which they defined at-risk youth was not conclusive. In particular, they defined at risk youth as “those students who have demonstrated academic and/or school behavioral problems that render them less likely to graduate from high school” (Hickman & Wright, 2011, p. 27). They relied on teacher’s reports of academic and behavioral problems. The problem is that they did not identify the time-frames of the teacher reports.
Quality of mentoring relationships. Quality of mentoring relationships has significant effects on variations in the effects of mentoring (Chan et al., 2012; Grossman et al., 2012; Thomson, 2010; Thomson & Rand, 2010; Thomson & Zand, 2010). In order to establish a quality mentoring relationship, trust, perceptions of being understood, liked, and respected are essential conditions (Slack et al., 2013; Zand et al., 2010). Thomson (2010) found that the quality of mentoring significantly predicts the youth’s friendship and self-disclosure to adults. Thomson’s (2010) findings were consistent with the findings of Thomson and Zand (2010). Thomson and Zand (2010) found that quality of mentoring relationships was associated with improvements in youth’s attachment to parents, youths’ self-disclosure to adults, and youths’ friendship with adults. The study underscored the importance of building high quality mentoring relationships that the youth might consider as authentic, empathetic, and provide companionship (Thomson & Zand, 2010).
There has been considerable focus on studying how mentoring relationships enhance youth outcomes. However, most of the studies have not used relationships scales with established psychometric properties (Thomson & Zand, 2010). However, two studies (Thomson & Zand, 2010) are an exception to this observation. Most successful mentoring relationships seem to be less characterized by positive qualities but more by absence of negative feelings and disappointment (Rhodes et al., 2009). Youths, who do not experience betrayal in mentoring relationships, they tend to report feelings of “not dissatisfied”. The feelings of “not dissatisfied” means that there are no negative feelings, but this is not necessarily equal to the feeling of being connected to the other in a relationship (Rhodes et al., 2009). Similarly, Chan et al. (2013) found that mentoring relationship of high quality were associated with improved parent-child and student-teacher relationships. The improvements in the relationships between the students and parents and teachers were further associated with better academic attitudes, self-esteem, and prosocial behavior (Chan et al., 2013). However, Chan and colleagues were unable to explain the underlying process that led to improved child-parent and student-teacher relationships. They did not determine whether the observed improvements occurred as a result of changes in the attachment process. In addition, it is not clear whether the bonds associated with mentoring relationships changed the adolescents’ relationship models or enhanced the parental relationships through mechanisms. Nevertheless, the study provided important finding on the effect of supportive and caring mentoring relationships with volunteers in improving child-parent relationships. The study also showed that the influence of mentors in school-based mentoring goes beyond their mere presence in the school into improving the relationships between students and teachers.
Youth’s interpersonal histories. This category involves factors related to the child’s past such as parental separation, parental incarceration, abandonment, abuse or neglect, peer rejection, and gang involvement or delinquency (Dubois et al., 2011;Rhodes, 2002). Mentoring is a relationship-based intervention, and therefore the youth’s relational history affects the extent to which the youth will benefit from mentoring (Schwartz et al., 2010). Some of the young people who participate in mentoring programs have had a history of sufficiently supportive relationships while others might have had unsupportive relationships characterized by neglect (Schwartz et al., 2010). These differences in relational histories affect the quality and length of mentoring relationships as well as outcomes associated with mentoring (Romero-Canyas, Downey, Berenson, Ayduk, & Kang, 2010; Schwartz et al., 2010). It is reasonable to assume that the previous experiences of the youth affect the quality of mentoring relationships because in essence, mentoring is based on relationships. The youth’s prior experiences might have positive or negative experiences on the mentoring relationships and its outcome. Youth with positive relational histories are less likely to negatively perceive ambiguous negative behavior such as a late appointment. They are also better equipped to positively respond to the support from the mentors (Schwartz et al., 2010). Mentoring might act as a “corrective” experience for the youth to have positive perceptions toward relationships with adults. In their meta-analysis, Dubois et al. (2011) found that stronger mentoring program effects among those programs that served the youths with previous involvement in problem behaviors. Mentoring is also helpful as it might reduce the youth’s vulnerability to join antisocial peers to seek approval following a rejection.
However, youths who have had unsatisfactory and harmful relationships with adults might be unwilling to trust the mentor assigned to them. Similarly, youths who have experienced rejection from peers might approach mentoring relationships with heightened interpersonal sensitivity. For example, youths who have had a previous experience of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse have less enduring relationships with mentors. They may have negative perceptions towards expectations and biases and hence view ambiguous gestures such as canceled appointments more negatively. They may also have poor positive responses to the support provided by the mentor. The poor responses to mentor’s support negatively affect the mentor’s enthusiasm and persistence thus reducing the length and compromising the quality of the mentoring program. Schwartz et al. (2010) found that youth who were struggling in their relationships with parents and peers benefited most from school-based mentoring on various variables, although the benefits were few. These variables included overall academic performance, prosocial behavior, classroom affect, classroom effort, self-perceptions of academic abilities, global self-worth, and unexcused absences. However, small but significant improvements were only observed in unexcused absences (Schwartz et al., 2010). Schwartz and colleagues found that youths who had strongest relationships with their parents, peers and teachers before the mentoring relation did not derive significant benefits from all the variables studied (Schwartz et al., 2010).
Although the study has a key strength in the use of a longitudinal data and large national sample, it suffers various limitations that should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results. The most important limitation is that the data were obtained from only one program, BBBS, and therefore cannot be fully generalized to other mentoring programs that have different structures. Another key weakness is that the mentors in BBBS are largely of high school age, which has been found to be not as effective as older mentors (Schwartz et al., 2010). There is a possibility that if the youth were matched with mostly older volunteers, the effect of the mentoring relationship would have been stronger. Additional care should be taken in interpreting the results because youths in school-based mentoring programs spend less time with mentors compared to youth in community-based mentoring. Therefore, the results of this study might have been different if the mentoring had been more intense. Furthermore, the follow-up time was short, and therefore might not have been enough for the intervention to have significant effects (Schwartz et al., 2010).
Program characteristics. Youth mentoring programs are made up of a broad range of interconnected activities and practices (Dubois et al., 2011). The nature of mentoring programs greatly influences the effectiveness of mentoring programs (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). There are best practices associated with program infrastructure that enhance the intensity and longevity of the relationship. In general, program characteristics include program infrastructure and design, youth and mentor characteristics, and program practices. Program practice characteristics include issues such as mentor screening, mentor-training (at the beginning and continuous), criteria for matching the youth with a mentor (gender, race/ethnicity, personality/interests), and support for the mentoring activities (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera, Dubois, & Grossman, 2013). Britner and Kraimer-Rickably (2010) reported that some best practices include mentor screening, more than two hours of intensive training for mentors, structured activities through which mentors and the youth will interact during mentoring, and a defined method of continuous monitoring of the match. Other best practices that influence the outcomes associated with mentoring include supports and supervision (Britner & Kraimer-Rickably, 2010). Consistent with the findings of Britner and Kraimer-Rickably (2010), Hansen, Romens, and LaFleur (2011) observed that improved training of the mentors and support to the matches were associated with stronger, high quality mentoring relationships. The findings stressed the importance of matching the youth with volunteers who have been trained on relationships building skills. Mentor training is associated with the mentor’s feelings of closeness, support, satisfaction, and effectiveness, which have a positive impact on the duration and outcomes of mentoring (Chan et al., 2013; Herrera et al. 2013).
Slack and colleagues identified the need to have regular mentor workshops on how to enhance the effectiveness of mentors (Slack et al., 2013). Herrera et al. (2013) reported that mentors who had been provided with early-match training and consistent program support tended to have more frequent meetings and had longer-lasting mentoring relationships. The youth in such relationships had higher quality relationships (Herrera et al., 2013). The challenge is, however, scarcity of evidence-based training programs for volunteer mentors (Kupersmidt & Rhodes, 2013), which might explain the increasing difficulties involved in retaining volunteers (Grossman et al., 2012). This is a worrying trend because research shows that premature termination of mentoring relations as a result of issues such as mentors leaving the relationship is associated with adverse effects on the youth (Grossman et al., 2012). The types of activities that the mentor and the youth engage in during mentoring interactions are equally important and crucial in enhancing the outcomes of mentoring (Britner & Kraimer-Rickaby, 2010). Mentoring experiences are responsible for the wide variations observed in the effectiveness of mentoring programs. The manner in which mentoring works requires longer durations to realize benefits. Mentors need sufficient time to provide care and support that can challenge the previous perceptions that the youth might hold concerning relationships. The result of this relationship will be that the youth will form better relationships with their families and teachers because of the care they receive during mentoring (Chan et al., 2012; Grossman et al., 2012).
Youth characteristics that might affect the quality of relationships and their outcomes include gender, race/ethnicity, individual risk level, and environmental risk level (Dubois et al., 2011). However, research has been inconsistent on the effect of youth demographics on the mentoring outcomes (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013; Thomson & Zand, 2010). Herrera et al. (2011) did not find any significant effects of mentoring on youth on the basis of demographics such as race and gender. This finding is consistent with a finding reported two years later (Herrera et al., 2013). Herrera et al. (2013) found that outcomes for youth did not differ significantly on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, age, single-parent status, poverty, parental incarceration, depression/stress, lack of friends, and poor relationships with parents and peers. The two reports by Herrera and colleagues all evaluated mentoring on youths who participated in BBBS mentoring program. Therefore, it is not surprising that findings were consistent on the effect of demographics on youth outcomes.
However, this finding is inconsistent with that of Zand et al. (2009) who reported that after eight months; mentoring relationships of high quality were associated with better results among girls than on boys on four domains including family bonding, relationships with adults, school bonding, and life skills. Zand and colleagues argued, in an effort to explain the finding, that eight months might not have been sufficient for boys to establish a close bond with their mentors. This argument seems to be difficult to accept because previous research shows that mentoring effects are realized after a school year (which is less than 9 months of mentoring taking into account time lost during the beginning of the school year) and tend to disappear thereafter (Herrera et al., 2011; Thomson & Zand, 2010). However, there differences in the samples studied by Herrera et al. (2011) and Zand et al. (2009) which might have explained the observed differences. Herrera et al. (2011) reported findings of a school-based mentoring program while Zand et al. (2009) reported findings of a community-based mentoring program. In addition, mentor’s in Herrera et al. (2011) were volunteers while mentors in the Zand et al. (2009) were paid volunteers. Paid mentors might take mentoring relationships more seriously and responsibly and might be perceived differently by the youth than their volunteer counterparts (Thomson & Zand, 2010). The other notable difference related to the age of the mentors. Nevertheless, Zand and colleagues suggested that additional research should be conducted to determine specific time points when different subgroups are likely to realize benefits of high quality mentoring relationships (Thomson & Zand, 2010).
Youth risk profiles might significantly be associated with mentoring outcomes (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013). Mentoring programs serving youths with higher levels of individual and environmental risks were associated with stronger program effects (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013). In relation to individual and environmental risk, the effects of mentoring were strongest under two conditions: when the individual risk was low but the environmental risk was high, or when the individual risk was high but the environmental risk was low (Dubois et al., 2011). The finding of Dubois et al. (2011) meta-analysis were inconsistent with those of a later mentoring program evaluation on the effect of risk profiles on mentoring outcomes (Herrera et al., 2013). Herrera et al. (2013) reported that youth who had relatively low levels of both individual and environmental risk and vulnerabilities gained the least benefits from the mentoring relationship. Youth in the intervention group had improvements in depressive symptoms, acceptance by peers, and positive beliefs on their ability to be successful in school (Herrera et al., 2013). Dubois and colleagues have reported that although youth from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to benefit from mentoring, they did not determine whether it was the youths’ home or the surrounding community that had put them at a disadvantage. Mentoring relationships might offer protection to the youth against being exposed to risk factors and possible involvement in gang violence (Dubois et al., 2011).
Mentor characteristics that might affect the quality of mentoring relationships and their outcomes include characteristics such as educational level and similarity in demography with the youth. Others include having a helping background, shared experiences with the youth, and congruence between the mentor’s educational background and occupation with the goals of the mentoring program (Dubois et al., 2011; Straus, Johnson, Marquez, & Feldman, 2013). Selection and recruitment should focus on getting the mentors who are most suitable, in light of these characteristics. In their meta-analysis, Dubois et al. (2011) found evidence for the critical role that mentor recruitment and selection plays in enhancing the success of mentoring relationships. They found that matching the mentor’s educational and occupational background with mentoring goals, was associated with greater effectiveness of mentoring relationships (Dubois et al., 2011). For example, mentoring programs that have education-related goals might be better accomplished by teachers as mentors (Dubois et al., 2011). Similarly, mentoring programs that are geared toward enhancing readiness for work and career exploration are better accomplished by business professionals as mentors (Dubois et al., 2011). On the same note, Taussig and Culhane (2010) found that program goals that are relational in nature could best be achieved by using mentors with a training background in social work. However, researchers have cautioned against using these findings to argue that only mentors with specialized training or relevant experience are the only ones who might help realize the goals of mentoring programs (Wyman et al., 2010). Instead, the emphasis should be placed on effectiveness preparation and support for mentors regardless to ensure that they are aligned with the organization’s goals of mentoring.
The criteria used to match youth to mentors have also received attention from mentoring researchers. The criteria to use in order to pair youth with mentors affect the quality of relationships and mentoring outcomes. Dubois and colleagues reported that matching decisions should be heavily informed by the similarity between the mentor and the youth. When the youth and the mentor perceive themselves as being similar, they tend to have better quality and longer-term mentoring relationships (Dubois et al., 2011). Particularly, Dubois et al. (2011) found that stronger program effects were associated with “a relatively strong fit between the education/occupational backgrounds of mentors and the program’s goals” (p. 69). Further support for the importance of similarity in matching decision is found in the research on the role of perceived similarity in interpersonal attraction and social influence processes (Dubois et al., 2011). Similarity might be in the form of shared interests that are in line with the program goals.
However, Dubois and colleagues found that matching youth and mentors on the basis of same race or ethnicity predicted less favorable effects (Dubois et al., 2011). The authors noted that they were hesitant in placing “too great a weight” on the finding because “such an association was emerged only in this one area” of their analysis (Dubois et al., 2011, p. 78). They further explained that although many mentoring programs aim to match youth from minority ethnicities with mentors from the same ethnicities, there is no consistent pattern of differences in favor of such relationships (Dubois et al., 2011). These observations suggest that matching decisions should go beyond democratic similarities and look into “deeper and more nuanced considerations of compatibility” (Dubois et al., 201, p. 78). The kind of roles that mentors serve in the mentoring programs significantly affects the outcome of mentoring relationships. Dubois et al. (2011) found that mentoring programs in which mentors serve advocacy roles were associated with stronger effects. Similar observations were made in mentoring programs designed to facilitate mentors who served as teachers and information sources.
Family and community. The family and community context in which mentoring occurs is crucial in shaping how young people respond to mentoring relationships (Dubois et al., 2011; Spencer & Basualdo-Delmonico, 2014). Some of the aspects related to family and community include family structure and resources, family relationships, access to informal mentoring, schools, and neighborhood (Chan et al., 2011; Dubois et al., 2011; Spencer & Basualdo-Delmonico, 2014). Family structure and resources have been mostly studied through variables such as family socioeconomic status, single parent household, and family size (Chan et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2013). Youth from single-parent households have been the target of most mentoring programs (Herrera et al., 2013). Family relationships have been studied through family conflicts/dysfunction, and quality of the parent-child relationship. Access to informal mentoring has been studied by examining the availability of positive role models. The reason why youths from single-parent households are the target of mentoring relationships is that they are believed to benefit from additional role models. However, research to validate this belief has provided little evidence to support it (Dubois et al., 2011). Notwithstanding this observation, Dubois et al. (2011) found that stronger mentoring program effects were found to be associated with the youth who were living in single-parent household. School-related variables mainly include school problems, such as underperforming and problematic climate. The other aspect of family and community context, neighborhood, is mainly studied through variables such as low neighborhood resources and neighborhood risk factors such as drug use, crime, and violence (Dubois et al., 2011).
Previous research has suggested that the relationship between the youth and their parents and teacher have a mediating role (Chan et al., 2013. Chan and colleagues found that improved child-parent and student-teacher relationships were associated with better mentoring outcomes. Chan and colleagues observed improvements in school-related psychological and behavioral outcomes such as academic attitudes, self-esteem, and prosocial behavior. These observations were made for both males and females and across elementary, middle, and high school students (Chan et al., 2013). These findings are in line with the broad body of research on the social nature of learning that links close student-teacher relationships with student motivation, school engagement, school value, behavioral adjustment, and academic competence and achievement (Allen et al., 2012; Eccles & Roeser, 2011; O’Connor, 2010). The findings stressed the importance of focusing on parents and teachers in enhancing the outcomes associated with mentoring.
Social competencies. Social competencies include emotional regulation, interpersonal sensitivity, and capacity for engaging others (Rhodes, 2002). Previous research has examined deficits in social skills, mental health problems, and referral to psychological treatment to study the effect of social competencies on the quality of mentoring relationships and their outcomes (Dubois et al., 2011). Youths who are able to regulate their emotions positively, and those who have positive temperaments, are most likely to have highly engaging relationships with mentors. Youth who have high levels of social competence seem to be more valued by their teachers, peers, and volunteer mentors. This means that socially skilled youth are particularly in a good position to get the benefits of mentoring. However, this does not mean that less socially competent youth cannot derive as much benefits from mentoring as their socially skilled counterparts. Youth with poor social skills might undergo compensatory dynamics that improve their position to benefit from mentoring as their counterparts with high social competence (Dubois et al., 2011).
Mentoring At-Risk African American Males
The well-being of any country is largely dependent on the country’s ability to prepare well-adjusted, well-educated, responsible young people to take responsibility as the older generation passes (Herrera et al., 2011). Consequently, educators, educational policy makers, and the public have broadly agreed that students graduating from the educational system should be proficient in academic core subjects, work and interact well with others from diverse backgrounds, behave responsibly, and avoid problematic behavior (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011; Gorard & See, 2013). Children aged between 9 and 14 years old face important developmental and school-related changes that make them prone to academic, behavioral, and social problems (Herrera et al., 2011). Many children can overcome these challenges because they have adult supports and skills they need to handle them (Herrera et al., 2011). However, others lack support and encouragement from parents and guardians, which makes it difficult for them to effectively negotiate the challenges. Such children have been labeled as at risk. There are some key characteristics defining children at risk. These include poor school attendance, retention in grade level, behavioral problems, poverty or low socioeconomic status, low achievement, substance abuse, and teen pregnancy (Hickman & Wright, 2011). An at-risk youth might have one of more of such characteristics. The factors are also responsible for school dropouts (Herrera et al., 2011; Hickman & Wright, 2011).
‘At risk’ label and educational attainment of AA students. As young children, youth labeled as at risk are often exposed to extraordinary challenges such as poverty, single parenthood, parental incarceration, military deployment, dangerous neighborhoods, and family violence which place children at a risk (Big Brothers Big Sisters, 2014; Thomson & Kelly-Vance, 2001; Yadav, O’Reilly, & Karim, 2010). Consequently, at risk children, especially the males, need additional support to face these challenges and enhance chances of academic success. As a result, at risk children have an increased likelihood of engaging in activities such as early sexual behavior, truancy, drug use, leaving school, and involving in juvenile crime (Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014). Males in particular face the stereotypes projected by society that makes them susceptible to pressure to engage in truant activities like drugs, rebellious, violence and alcohol (Yadav et al., 2010). These activities have serious psychological, social, academic, and health consequences on the child.
Student’s identification with academics is a crucial ingredient of academic success. Academic identification is defined as the degree to which academic pursuits and outcomes inform global self-evaluation (Gordon et al., 2009). Students who have high academic identification have their self-esteem connected with their academic success and therefore they are motivated to perform academically. On the contrary, students with low identification with academics will more likely perform poorly academically because they are detached from academic tasks. In this light, AA students’ school identification has been found to have a significant impact on their academic motivation, performance, and success. Student identification with academics is especially crucial among AA males. The reason is that they “disproportionately experience more tracking into low-ability groups, are socially and economically isolated from their classmates, receive more frequent and harsher disciplinary actions, and tend to be held in lower academic regard by their teachers” (Gordon et al., n. p.).
Intra-cultural (emic) and structural (etic) forces work together to collectively isolate and alienate AA male students from academia. Etic sources of distress for AA students is informed by the observation that for the AA students, “school is simply the place where they learn they are not valued” (Gordon et al., 2009, n. p.). Since identification with academics depends on identification with the school, it becomes difficult for the AA students to identify with academics once they learn they are not valued in the school. Students who have a sense of belonging to the school perceive themselves as significant members of the school who are respected and accepted. Emic sources of distress for AA students are found in the identification with academics where school is crucial and necessary for the student’s future success in life (Gordon et al., 2009). Previous research has consistently reported that AA students have to handle more achievement barriers and demonstrate lower educational outcomes compared to their white counterparts (Hurd et al., 2012). In particular, AA students are disadvantaged in terms of suspensions, high school graduations, enrolment in college, and graduation in college compared with their white counterparts (Hurd et al., 2012).
AA males are more likely to receive a suspension or expulsion from school compared to white counterparts. In the 2006-07 school year, 19% of AA males were given out-of-school suspensions compared to only 7% of their white counterparts (Urban Strategies Council, 2012). Moreover, AA males typically have lower academic achievement compared to their White non-Latino counterparts. For instance, in 2009, only 9% of 8th grade AA males were proficient or higher in reading compared to 33% of White males (Urban Strategies Council, 2012). Lack of proper moral support increases chances that at risk youth will leave school (Tolliver, 2013). AA males face a myriad of problems when integrating into middle and high school levels of education (Butler et al., 2013). Most students entering high school do so in the midst of an important developmental period; therefore, this segment of the educational system poses great potential for risk-factor manifestation (Butler et al., 2013; Strayhorn, 2012).
High school graduation among AA males has increased between 2001-02 and 2009-10 (Butler et al., 2013). The Urgency of Now 2012 report shows that in 2009-10, 52% of the AA males graduate from high school in four years, compared to 42% in 2001-02 (The Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2012). This was the first time that more than half of the black males had graduated from high school without repeating classes. Despite the increase, the graduation rate for AA males was the lowest among other ethnicities, including the Latino and White non-Latino counterparts whose graduation rate was 58% and 78% respectively (The Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2012).
Transition to college is another challenge facing AA students (Brittian et al., 2009). According to Brittian et al. (2009), only 10% of college students were AA as of 2009 and this creates a situation of poor representation in predominantly white institutions. This underrepresentation is responsible for a portion of the lack of interest in higher education displayed by AA youth (Brittian et al., 2009). The number of African Americans in college is composed of 71% male students and 29% female, depicting a higher male population and no need to develop programs that focus on the male youth (Brittian et al., 2009). This figure, however, is on the decline with campuses seeing fewer numbers of AA male registrations every year (Brittian et al., 2009). Among AA males who enroll in bachelor’s degree courses, only 11% of them graduate (Urban Strategies Council, 2012). These various differences in educational attainment are often associated with higher unemployment rates, involvement in crime, poverty, and health (mental and physical) among AA Americans.
Racial identity and mentoring among AA students. The preceding discussion lays a foundation to examine school alienation that AA students experience through the social structures, roles, and functions. African Americans still have the lessons of racism fresh in their minds and since this is generationally transferrable, the younger generation has learnt to cope with the older one’s problems (Larose et al., 2012). Over time, the AA race developed a form of “resistance capital” that is considered by many researchers to have constituted a major part of their survival and makes them feign indifference in light of problems thereby acting as the main source of their resilience (Butler et al., 2013). As a result, the motivational driving force for this portion of students is more culture-centric and is not necessarily based on success in educational circles, making it necessary for the educational system to understand, accept and incorporate them (Butler et al., 2013; Gordon et al., 2009). Further, due to the lack of a definite cultural history other than the struggle for equal rights, AA history is quite bare and lacks the support structure to sustain a continuously progressive and self-reliant culture (Gordon et al., 2009). AA males, therefore, may require the inclusion of a cultural and historical attachment to one’s own culture before one begins to visualize a social niche for themselves (Gordon et al., 2009; Vivian, 2009). In order to understand how stereotypes are internalized and why AA students get disengaged with academics, an overview of racial identity theory is necessary (Gordon et al., 2009).
Previous research has considerably established a connection between mentoring and AA students’ racial identity and the effect of that relationship on educational attainment (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). Relationship-based interventions such as mentoring hold a considerable promise in fostering competence across multiple domains among at risk youth (Thomson & Zand, 2010). Mentoring has been found to enhance educational attainment through racial identity (Hurd et al., 2012). Mentoring helps in shaping racial identity which in turn fosters academic beliefs and later educational attainment (Hurd et al., 2012). Hurd and colleagues believe that mentoring relationships give the youth an opportunity to reflect upon the role of their race in defining their identity and subsequently enhancing centrality and positive perceptions about their race. It is also possible that the support that the youth receive during mentoring enable them to explore and develop their racial identities (Hurd et al., 2012). Moreover, mentors might influence racial identity among AA youth by passing socialization messages to them. Mentors could choose to pass positive race-related messages. The message helps the AA youth to develop their self-esteem (Hurd et al., 2012).
Racial Identity is normally realized during adolescence through a process of crisis and commitment. The process of crisis is concerned with exploring available alternatives while commitment is related to making a decision that reflects personal investment. Identity is heavily informed by an individual’s history and their place in that history. For students from minority groups, their minority status will most likely inform their interactions. From a psychological perspective, the social history of AA is defined by two competing processes, including deracination and negrescence. The former refers to the attempt to erase black consciousness while the latter is concerned with an attempt to develop Afro-American identity (Gordon et al., 2013). The process of becoming Black is often viewed as an omnipresent theme the social history of the AA people.
Racial identity theory shows how “individuals internalize and react to racial oppression and discrimination” (Gordon et al., 2009, n. p.). There are two conceptualizations of the theory of racial identity, namely Helms and Parham (1996) and Sellers, Smith, Shelton, Rowley, & Chavous (1998). The two models have been used to study racial identity and educational attainment within the context of mentoring. The researchers have sought to investigate how mentoring relationships influence educational attainment through their effect on racial identity (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). The theory of racial identity proposed by Helms and Parham (1996) holds that race is not a salient aspect of an individual’s life during the pre-encounter status. An individual tends to be neutral on issues related to race. The other status, encounter, occurs when an individual begins to take notice of ideas about their personal or social events that enhance change on how the individual conceptualizes their identity. The immersion/emersion status is marked by the individual eliminating their previously held ideas of race and attempting to immerse themselves into the Black culture. During this state, the AAs hold negative perceptions of the whites owing to the past and present injustices the white caused the AAs. The status of internalization denotes a “resolution to previous racial identity conflict” during which an individual is capable of internalizing positive Black history (Helms & Parham, 1996).
The racial identity model proposed by Sellers et al. (1998) (multidimensional model of racial identity (MMRI)) consists of four dimensions of African American identity. The dimensions include regard held for the racial group, the salience of race to one’s identity, the centrality of race to one’s identity, and the ideology associated with the identity (Sellers et al., 1998). Hurd et al. (2012) reviewed research and found that racial centrality and regard for one’s racial group might be associated with educational attainment among AA youth. Racial centrality is the extent to which an individual normatively defines themselves in terms of their race (Sellers et al., 1998).
Regard for an individual’s racial group involves both private and public regard (Hurd et al. 2012; Sellers et al., 1998). Private regard refers to one’s perceptions of their racial group and their membership in that group while public regard refers to how the society perceives an individual’s racial group. The observation that higher racial centrality is associated with better academic performance among AA students implies that perceiving race as central to one’s identity might be associated with improved educational attainment (Hurd et al., 2012; Hurd & Sellers, 2013).
Private regard (strong sense of group pride) is associated with positive academic attitudes and behavior among AA youth (Hurd et al., 2012; Sellers et al., 1998). This is an indication that AA youth who feel good about their racial group are likely to have better educational outcomes (Hurd et al., 2012; Sellers et al., 1998).
However, previous research provides inconsistent results on the relationship between public regard and academic educational outcomes (Hurd et al., 2012). It is often hypothesized that when AA youth perceive their racial group as devalued by others, they are likely to perceive more barriers to their education and hence have poor educational outcomes (Sellers et al., 1998). The implication of this hypothesis is that if AA youth have low perception of public regard, they will have less engagement with school because they do not consider education as an effective tool for upward social mobility. AA older adolescents with low public regard show more negative academic attitudes and lower educational attainment. It was also found these were the same AA youth who had demonstrated low centrality and private regard (Hurd et al., 2012).
However, AA youth with low public regard but centrality and private regard tend to have more positive perceptions of their academics and educational attainment (Hurd et al., 2012). Hurd et al. (2012) found that AA males with natural mentor were likely to have higher public regard, meaning that they perceived other groups in the society as perceiving their race more positively (Hurd et al., 2012). This finding was contrary to Hurd and colleagues’ hypothesis on the relationship between having a natural mentor and public regard. The researchers had expected that the natural mentors would expose the AA youth to conversations on race and how the larger American society perceives AA race. Hurd and colleagues speculated that natural mentors might have described perceptions of the American society toward the AA race as occurring at the individual level (Hurd et al., 2012). Although this is a possible explanation, it does not seem to explain this finding exhaustively. It is possible that natural mentors might have considered sensitizing the youth on the negative perceptions of other races on the youth’s race as inappropriate. The mentors might have, therefore, chosen to focus on positive experiences of the AA race and its interactions with other races. It is important to note that the researchers did not interview the mentors to find out about the areas they covered during mentoring. This makes it difficult to determine why the youth perceived other races as having positive race toward the AA race. In addition, Hurd et al. (2012) did not determine the race and ethnicity of youth’s natural mentors. If some natural mentors were non-AA, it is possible that they might have chosen not speak about how other races (probably the mentor’s race) have negative perceptions toward the youth’s race, and instead focused on how positive interactions of races only.
The implication of these findings is that AA youth who hold their ethnicity in high regard, perceive themselves as connected to other members of their racial group, and are aware of the societal perceptions of their group are likely to perceive education as a tool for overcoming negative stereotypes the society has toward their group (Hurd et al., 2012). The motivation behind the AA youth in each case is the belief that education is required in order to achieve success in future. These observations are consistent with research that has linked perceptions of school as presenting an opportunity for social mobility and better educational outcomes (O’Brien & Mars, 2011). It has also been reported that students with higher racial centrality might have improvement educational outcomes such as academic involvement and achievement. This is an implication that racial centrality might moderate the association between regard and academic outcomes. Hurd and colleagues found that AA males who have natural mentors are more likely to have high private regard and centrality. The findings shows that AA youth who have supportive and caring nonparental adults in their life are better racial identity beliefs.
The process of racial identity and how it develops might have a significant impact on the educational achievement of AA males (Gordon et al., 2009; Hurd et al., 2012). For instance, an examination of the association between racial identity status and academic self-concept, self-esteem, and GPA among high school students showed that racial identity development status might affect academic performance. For example, high school students who hold immersion attitudes had lower GPA. The reason might have been that students with immersion attitudes might hold anti-white attitudes or be disconnected with the education system that they, might perceive as a white education system. Students with immersion attitudes might even consider academic behaviors as white behaviors (Gordon et al., 2009). However, these findings were not replicated in studies involving older and college age students. Gordon and colleagues have argued that these inconsistent results might be as a result of different developmental levels of high school and college students (Gordon et al., 2009).
As noted, there seems to be inadequate measures implemented by the educational system in terms of supporting minority students to the extent that institutional disadvantages are being felt as early as kindergarten (Schueths & Carranza, 2012). These students therefore have a higher risk of failing in school, possibly leading to truancy and other delinquent behavior. Federal statistics show that although black students represent a smaller percentage of the student population compared to their white counterparts, they account for a far higher rate of suspension and expulsion (US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014). The poor academic performance, suspensions, drop out and lack of a college-going culture and college persistence in the social fabric is therefore a tenet that might require correcting and enforcing if AA students are to realize their full potential. There has been a call for innovative and rigorous interventions defining and outlining the challenges faced by adolescent AA males (Gordon et al., 2011). Previous research shows that a positive, caring adult might provide an at risk child substantial support that could supplement the needs that the child does not get from the family as a result of these factors/environment (Dubois et al., 2011; Herrera et al., 2011; Lampley & Johnson, 2010). Mentoring programs in the US stemmed from the persistent public and governmental concern over poor and negative outcomes experienced by significant groups of children growing up under conditions that place them at a disadvantage. Mentoring relationships have the potential to contribute towards long-term educational attainment among AA students by way of influencing the racial identity and academic beliefs (Hurd et al., 2012). Mentoring relationships might enhance private regard and strengthen beliefs on the importance of doing well in school in order to be successful in future (Hurd et al., 2012).
There have been attempts to define how mentoring programs should adopt Afro-centric worldview (Gordon et al., 2009). It is important to incorporate Afro-centric worldview because it fosters an understanding of the psychological function and behaviors of AA. Proponents believe that Afro-centric mentoring programs might help enhance AA males’ understanding of their cultural and historic backgrounds and encourage pro-social behavior. It is possible for the successful members of the AA community to nurture a sense of connectedness and offer educationally successful positive role. The reason is that Afro-centric framework is concerned with collectiveness and incorporates the youth’s community (Gordon et al., 2009). Stronger affiliation to a racial group and connectedness might foster academic motivation among middle and high school students. It has been argued that the enhanced academic motivation might be as a result of increased awareness of the institutional barriers that AA students might face and subsequent desire to work hard in order to overcome such barriers to educational attainment (Hurd et al., 2012). Moreover, feelings of connectedness to other AAs might be helpful to AA youths in enabling them to reject the negative perceptions that other racial groups hold towards their ethnicity (Hurd et al., 2012).
Challenges Facing Youth Mentoring
There are several issues associated with youth mentoring. First, not every youth is equally suited for mentoring (Schwartz et al., 2010). Mentoring can be used as a substitute for professional treatment of youth with emotional, behavioral, or academic problems. However, youth’s baseline functioning, relationship history and access to additional support affect the extent to which they may benefit from mentoring (Schwartz et al., 2010). For instance, youth who join mentoring programs while they are strongly connected to their parents, teachers and coaches have sufficient adult support and therefore may not need mentoring (Schwartz et al., 2010).
Moreover, youth who experienced unsatisfactory relationships with adults may find it difficult to trust adult volunteers (Romero-Canyas et al., 2010). For example, youth who have had insecure parental attachments may feel less secure while relating with mentors (Romero-Canyas et al., 2010). However, Chan et al. (2013) argued that adult mentors can provide consistent support and therefore challenge any negative perceptions that the youth may hold about relationships. The adult mentors can prove to the youth that it is possible to have a rewarding relationship with adults (Chan et al., 2013). Further, youth who have moderate to severe relational problems resistant to change such as aggressive and antisocial behaviors may require comprehensive interventions that volunteer mentors cannot offer (Schwartz et al., 2010).
Further, premature termination of relationships presents serious challenges to the mentoring programs (Grossman et al., 2012). Mentoring can have detrimental effects to the youth, especially when it ends prematurely. When that happens, youth feel abandoned and uncared for, and this may even confirm the youth’s existing worries that they are not worth of loving and belonging (Eby et al., 2011). Additionally, relationships that end prematurely have led to decline in the effects of mentoring. The situation is further complicated by research findings that re-matching after a relationship ends prematurely may result in poor results (Grossman et al., 2012). For instance, Grossman et al. (2012) found that youth who were re-matched after their previous relationships ended prematurely fare worse than the youth in the control group. In an effort to explain the observed findings, they argued that re-matching might have been done rapidly without giving the youth time to reflect on the previous relationship, resolve and make sense of the difficult and disappointing experiences that might have characterized the previous relationship. As it happens with other relationships, there is need to allow youth to recover from mentoring relationships that have ended prematurely (Grossman et al., 2012).
Moreover, Rhodes (2009) identified negative impacts of mentoring which need attention. First, although research has ignored the impact of mentoring on siblings of mentees, Rhodes (2009) argued that members of family from where the protégé comes from feel hurt and jealous when one of them is singled out and exposed to opportunities and rewards. Similarly, parents may see themselves as marginalized when their children engage in relationships with caring adults (Rhodes et al., 2014). These are negative aspects of mentoring that need attention from the mentoring community. Most of the studies have greatly neglected the negative effects of mentoring and therefore there is need to examine them (Rhodes et al., 2009). Once the mentoring community becomes aware of the positive and negative effects of mentoring, it will be able to design mentoring programs that maximize the benefits while minimizing any negative effects (Rhodes et al., 2014).
There are serious methodological issues facing mentoring programs. Dubois and colleagues pointed out that the outcomes of interest in mentoring could significantly chance because of normal developmental processes over time, rather than the effect of the mentoring program. The changes might include favorable improvements such as self-esteem, and unfavorable changes such as increased participation in problem behavior. Favorable outcomes as result of normal development might artificially normally inflate the positive outcomes of mentoring while the negative outcomes as a result of normal development may lead to the erroneous conclusion that the mentoring program is ineffective (Dubois et al., 2011). Moreover, the durability and subsequent sustenance of the improvements in mentoring outcomes are not clearly understood. It has been difficult to solve this issue because no mentoring evaluation program has followed youth to adulthood.
Summary
This chapter has provided a review of literature on the meaning of mentoring and at-risk youth, models of mentoring, types of mentoring, effects of mentoring, factors influencing mentoring outcomes, and challenges of mentoring. The primary assumption of all the mentoring programs is that every child can potentially be successful in life if helped to exploit that potential. The situation that at-risk children, especially AA males, find themselves in is one that demands further attention of the educational system in order to ensure that they grow to be men and women of influence. The situation is no fault of theirs and as such, there is need to ensure that this unfair disadvantage is settled to allow them to better integrate into society. Mentoring is among the viable solutions that may assist at-risk students to realize full academic and life potentials. The studies reviewed have demonstrated that mentoring programs, if properly implemented, have the potential to positively affect the academic, social, and emotional outcomes of at-risk students. Mentoring studies have shown that although mentoring positively impacts on various aspects of life, its effects are most influential in positive attitudinal change. There are variations in the effect of mentoring programs on youth outcomes because of a number of factors including historical relations of the students, duration and quality of relationships, and program infrastructure. These factors affect the extent to which youth benefit from mentoring programs.
The review has also led to the identification of important challenges facing mentoring efforts. Some of these challenges include premature termination of relationships and the potentially negative effects of mentoring on siblings of the mentored youth. Although the studies reviewed have been both formal community-based and school-based studies, most of them have been school-based. However, little has been done to examine the impact of mentoring on AA middle school males’ self-perceptions of their academic abilities, global self-worth, and college-going self-efficacy in community-based programs. Most of the mentoring studies (Chan et al., 2012; Grossman et al., 2012; Herrera et al., 2011) examine mentoring in one organization such as BBBS and as such they cannot be easily applied to other mentoring programs since mentoring organizations typically do not follow a standardized program or curriculum. In addition it has been argued that mentoring programs should be designed and implemented on the basis of cultural aspects of the target at-risk (Gordon et al., 2009). Therefore, mentoring programs that were not designed on the basis of cultural aspects of African Americans may not be suitable for at-risk AA males. This has necessitated creation of Afro-centric mentoring programs such as KL, which target AA males. However, other than Gordon et al. (2009), there are no studies examining the impact of afro-centric mentoring programs. No study was found examining the impact of mentoring provided at KL, which offers afro-centric mentoring programs.
Chapter 3: Research Method
Although the American public education system is not legally segregated along ethnic lines, at-risk minority groups such as African-American (AA) males continue to be at a disadvantage in realizing the full benefits of education (Aud et al., 2011; Chapman et al., 2013; Schargel, 2013). They have been experiencing feelings of exclusion from the rest of the school and have been unable to develop a sense of identity that includes the school system (Butler et al., 2013; Gordon et al., 2009). This is a worrying situation because according to Howard (2013) and Washington (2013), poor academic performance of AA young males affects negatively on their future success. Fortunately, literature shows that school-based and community-based mentoring programs are effective in promoting positive perceptions about academic abilities, academic performance, test scores, and high school perseverance among young people (DuBois et al., 2011; Gordon et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2011; Phinney et al., 2011; Radcliff & Bos, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2011). However, little has been done to examine the impact of mentoring programs particularly tailored to the needs of at-risk middle school AA males, despite the potential benefits of the programs to the students (DuBois et al., 2011; Gordon et al., 2009; Herrera et al., 2011). In particular, Gordon et al. (2009) observed that “little research” has investigated the effectiveness of afro-centric mentoring programs on AA male youth in the middle school, and underlined the need for such studies. In this respect, the specific problem to be addressed in the proposed study is the lack of clear understanding of the effectiveness of an afro-centric youth mentoring program, Kappa League, in solving the challenges facing at-risk AA male students ages 11-14 years old.
Consequently, the primary purpose of the proposed quantitative study is to examine the impact of the afro-centric mentorship program offered at Kappa League on AA males’ self-perceptions. Particularly, the study will seek to determine if students mentored at Kappa League have better self-perceptions of academic abilities (as measured by the scholastic subscale of Self Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985), global self-worth (as measured by the Self-Esteem Questionnaire (Dubois et al., 1996), and college-going self-efficacy (as measured by College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b) than non-mentored students. The study will be conducted in an urban area of the southeast US. Effectively achieving this goal requires that the study adopt a quasi-experimental design (Black, 1999). Particularly, a non-equivalent control group posttest-only design will be adopted in the proposed study (Black, 1999; Campbell, Stanley & Gage, 1963; Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). Study participants will include AA male students ages 11-14 years old and registered at Kappa League. The treatment group, as per the results of power analysis performed using the G*Power tool, will be comprised of all the 36 AA males already enrolled for mentoring. The control group will consist of AA males previously interviewed by Kappa League and found to be suitable for mentoring, but were placed in a waiting list to begin mentorship next year. The investigation will, therefore, be guided by the following research questions/hypotheses:
Q1. What difference, if any, is there in self perceptions of academic abilities between AA males aged 11-14 who do and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Q2. What difference, if any, is there in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between AA males aged 11-14 who do and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Q3. What difference, if any, is there in self perceptions of global self-worth between AA males aged 11-14 who do receive and those who do not receive mentoring from the Kappa League program?
Hypotheses
H10 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of academic abilities between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H1a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of academic abilities between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H20 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H2a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H30 There will be no difference in self-perceptions of global self-worth perceptions between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
H3a. There will be a difference in self-perceptions of college-going self-efficacy between at-risk AA males who do and those who do not receive mentoring from Kappa League program.
This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the research methods and design, population, sample, and materials/instruments. The discussion of the methods will include the reasons for choosing particular methods as well as their weaknesses. The chapter will also provide operational definitions of variables and a discussion of the data collection and analysis procedures and methods. The chapter will end with a summary that will highlight the main issues addressed in the chapter.
Research Methods and Design
The proposed study will be a quantitative research that will adopt a quasi-experimental research design (Black, 1999; Campbell et al., 1963; Shadish et al., 2002). The participants for the study are already in two existing groups, with mentoring being underway on the intervention group while the control group awaits mentoring next year. Therefore, since there are two available groups, non-equivalent control group posttest-only design (Black, 1999; Campbell et al., 1963; Shadish et al., 2002), will be adopted to examine the impact of mentoring on the self-perceptions of at-risk AA middle school males ages 11 to 14 about their academic abilities, college-going self-efficacy, and global self-worth. Study participants will be obtained from Kappa League.
Use of the non-equivalent control group posttest-only design will be better compared to one group posttest-/observation-only (Black, 1999), because it will help in controlling for other external events and influences that the AA males will be exposed to other than mentoring at Kappa League. The reason is that other than treatment, both control and treatment groups are assumed to be exposed to the same influences in the society (Black, 1999). This will help in accounting for threats to internal validity such as history (Black, 1999). Although there will be no pretest “to ensure equivalence of groups” (Black, 1999, p. 70), there is sufficient evidence to believe that the two groups were similar at the beginning of mentoring.
Nevertheless, there is no absolute assurance that the AA males in the mentoring group and those in the non-mentoring group are at all equivalent on any variable prior to the study (Black, 1999). As such, it cannot be said with certainty that mentoring alone will be responsible for any observed change in the intervention group. It might be that the two groups were not equivalent at the beginning of the study, meaning that the differences observed between the mentored and non-mentored on the dependent variables might be somewhat as a result of nonequivalence of the groups and not to the mentoring alone.
Quasi experimental research design was chosen as opposed to a true experimental design because the researcher will not randomly assign the participants to either treatment or control group, but will simply pick those already in the mentoring program as the treatment group and those waiting for mentoring the following school semester as control group (Black, 1999; Campbell et al.,, 1963; Shadish et al., 2002). In conducting this study, it would be unethical for the researcher to randomly assign some students to mentoring and assign others to a non-mentoring group. The reason is that mentoring is beneficial according to the studies reviewed, and therefore it would be inappropriate to place some students in the non-mentoring group only for the purposes of this study, as that would possibly deny them the benefits of mentoring. Therefore, the researcher decided to use students who are already being mentored and the students in the mentoring list due to administrative issues but not for the purposes of the study.
Population
The population for the proposed study is the at risk AA males ages 11 through 14 years old. This population accounts for a significant number of the 4.5 million at risk youth in structured mentoring programs (Brittian et al., 2009; Bruce & Bridgeland, 2014; Gordon et al., 2009). At risk youth, including AA males, are associated with poor school attendance, retention in grade level, behavioral problems, poverty or low socioeconomic status, low achievement, substance abuse, and teen pregnancy AA males are particularly at a disadvantage given that they ought to matriculate in a seemingly hostile environment (Gordon et al., 2009). The hostile environment places the AA males in defense, a situation that negatively affects their academic performance. As the AA males feel stereotyped and alienated, they tend to disconnect their self-evaluation from their academic performance, thus placing their future success in uncertainty (Gordon et al., 2009).
Sample
The sample for the study will be obtained from Kappa League. A priori power analysis was performed to determine the minimum sample size for the study. The researcher used G*Power 3.1.9.2 power analysis tool to compute sample size given the alpha level, power, and effect size. The alpha level was set at the acceptable level of 0.05. Conventionally, a statistical power of .80 is considered acceptable. However, to enhance the chances of finding a statistically significant difference if it actually exists, a greater statistical power of .90 was chosen. A large effect size was chosen for the study (Cohen, 1988). Cohen (1988) has provided effect sizes for various tests, including for the t-test family. According to Cohen (1988), an effect size of .80 for t-test on means should be considered as large. The researcher therefore chose a large effect size in order to be more confident in interpreting the findings difference as meaningful, in the event that statistically significant observations will be made. The calculation returned a sample size of 72, in which each group is expected to have 36 participants.
The sampling method employed will be convenience. The researcher will use as participants the students who will have been registered at Kappa League for mentoring. The treatment group will consist of 36 AA males who have been assigned mentors and whose mentoring is already in progress and ends at the end of the 2014-2015 school year. Mentoring relationships last for one school year. The control group will consist of an equal number of AA males as the treatment group who have been interviewed and found to be eligible but were put on a waiting list to begin mentoring next year. The researcher will discuss the study with the parents/legal guardians to ensure that as many as 36 parents agree to have their children take part in the study. It is hoped that the required number will be obtained.
Materials/Instruments
The proposed study has three dependent variables that will be measured using previously published tools. Self-perceptions of academic abilities will be measured using a six-item tool obtained from the scholastic subscale of Self Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985). The items are designed to assess how youth estimate their academic competence. The version used by Schwartz et al. (2011) will be used in this study because it is tailored to middle school students. Respondents are asked to rate items on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from not at all true (1) to very true (4). Global self-worth perceptions of AA males will be measured with an 8-item subscale of the Self-Esteem Questionnaire developed by Dubois et al. (1996). Items are rated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from not all true (1) to very true (4). There is no evidence of racial bias in this data collection tool.
College going self-efficacy perceptions will be measured using a published tool College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (CGSES) (Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b). College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale was particularly designed for middle school counselors to help them measure college-going beliefs among middle school students who have not yet gone to college (Gibbons & Borders, 2010b). The tool has 15 items concerned with going to college and 16 items concerned with college persistence (Gibbons & Borders, 2010b). Beliefs in relation to all items are measured on a four-point Likert scale ranging from not all sure (1) to very sure (4) (Gibbons & Borders, 2010b).
Quantitative data collected in this study will be analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20. Inferential statistics will be conducted to examine statistical significance between groups. The researcher will perform a Mann-Whitney U test, a non-parametric test, to test the hypotheses (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). This test was chosen because the data will be measured at an ordinal level (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). In the proposed study, the independent variable will be mentoring, consisting of two categorical independent groups including treatment group and control group. Participants will only be in one group for the entire study, which means that there will be independence of observations. The dependent variables will be self-perceptions of academic abilities, self-perceptions of global self-worth, and self-perceptions of college-going efficacy.
Operational Definition of Variables
Mentoring. Following Eby et al. (2008), mentoring will be operationalized as mentored (treatment group) and non-mentored (control group). Mentored will include AA males who are already being mentored at Kappa League for the 2014-2015 school year while non-mentored (control group) AA males will be those on waiting list for next year’s mentoring. All the students that have been assigned a mentor and whose mentoring is in progress will be assigned to the treatment group while the students that will be on the waiting list will be assigned to the control group. Mentoring (the independent variable) will be a categorical variable.
Academic abilities self-perceptions. Data for this variable will be obtained through the use of Likert-style survey items in a previously validated tool, the scholastic subscale of Self Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985). Self-perceptions of academic abilities (dependent variable) will be measured at an ordinal level.
Global self-worth perceptions. Data on this variable will be obtained through Likert-style survey items in a validated tool, the Self-Esteem Questionnaire (Dubois et al., 1996). Global self-worth perceptions (dependent variable) will be measured at an ordinal level.
College-going self-efficacy perceptions. Data on the college-going self-efficacy perceptions will be obtained using a previously validated Likert-type survey tool, College-Going Self-Efficacy Scale (Gibbons, 2005; Gibbons & Borders, 2010a; Gibbons & Borders, 2010b). College-going self-efficacy perceptions (dependent variable) will be measured at an ordinal level.
Data Collection, Processing, and Analysis
Data for the proposed study will be obtained from students being mentored at KL. It is assumed that sufficient number will be obtained. If that does not happen, the study will be conducted with the available participants and the limitations of the sample size will be noted in interpreting the study findings. The following will be observed in accomplishing data collection, processing and analysis.
Data Collection. Data will be collected at the end of the school year, the time when mentoring usually ends. It will be collected at the KL headquarters. This will be during the last meeting in which both the mentor and the mentee report to the KL offices as a way of bringing the mentoring relationship to an end for a given school year. Questionnaires will be distributed to the students who after getting parental informed consent, and a go-ahead from the student.
Data processing. Each of the returned questionnaires will be screened for completeness and accuracy. Incomplete and inaccurate responses will be treated as missing data. The questionnaires will be kept in cabinet under lock and key, with the researcher only having the access. However, the supervisor might access the questionnaire.
Data analysis. Quantitative data collected in this study will be analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20. Inferential statistics will be conducted to examine statistical significance between groups. The researcher will perform a Mann-Whitney U test or an independent t-test to test each of the hypotheses individually (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). Before performing the tests, assumptions will for an independent t-test will be performed. If violated (especially the normality assumption), the alternative test, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test will be used. The significance level will be .05, which will determine if the null hypothesis is rejected or upheld. The answers to each of the research questions will be determine by examining the results of the comparisons. The findings will be reported to answer each question without necessarily focusing on the significance of the difference (but nevertheless noting whether it is significant or not).
In the proposed study, the independent variable will be mentoring, consisting of two categorical independent groups including treatment group and control group. Participants will only be in one group for the entire study, which means that there will be independence of observations. The dependent variables will be self-perceptions of academic abilities, self-perceptions of global self-worth, and self-perceptions of college-going efficacy.
Assumptions
There some key assumptions that underline this study. First, participants in the two groups will experience approximately the same normal developmental changes in relation to the outcomes of interest to this study. Second, mentors are assumed to engage in the same mentoring practices and activities in line with the training they receive from Kappa League. Third, significant equivalence of groups in relation to the dependent variables at the beginning of the studies is assumed. Fourth, participant honesty is assumed. It is assumed that participants will provide responses in an honest manner without intentions of pleasing the researcher.
Limitations
The design adopted for this study is vulnerable to selection threats to internal validity such as selection-history threat and selection-maturation threat occurring during the mentoring period, before the posttest (Trochim, 2006). In the case of selection-history threat to internal validity, the AA males may respond differently to an event or events occurring during the mentoring period. Therefore, the differences observed in the dependent variables at the end of mentoring might as well be because of the differential reaction to the event but not the mentoring program (Trochim, 2006). In the case of selection-maturation threat to internal validity, the AA males in both treatment and control groups may have different rates of normal developmental process in relation to the outcomes of interest in this study. Therefore, the observed results may be because of selection-maturation effects (Trochim, 2006).
The study might also suffer from attrition. Previous research of this nature has faced serious challenges in relation to attrition (e.g. Herrera et al., 2013). The study is expected to collect data from a mentoring program that began at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year. Some participants might opt (or might already have opted) out of the study. In order to mitigate this, efforts were made to have many participants so that should some leave the program in the course of the school year, those that will remain will be able to provide significant results.
Delimitations
The proposed study will be limited to AA males participating in the local southwestern urban Kappa League mentoring. The study is focused on measuring the effect of mentoring on self-perceptions or attitudinal outcomes, but not behavioral outcomes. In addition, the study will not be concerned will not evaluate the academic performance of AA males who will take part in the study.
Ethical Assurances
The researcher will conduct the study in an ethical manner. Informed consent will be obtained before conducting the study. Informed consent will be obtained from parents and legal guardians since the study participants will be children aged below 18 years of age (American Psychological Association (APA), 2010). Parents, legal guardians, and mentors will be informed about the study purpose, duration, and that the students will be involved in usual mentoring offered at Kappa League. Parents, legal guardians, and mentors will be informed that they can ask their children not to be part of the study at any time, and that this will not affect the mentoring benefits that the child has been receiving.
In addition to getting informed consent from parents, legal guardians, and mentors, the child’s permission will be sought before engaging them in the study. Parents, legal guardians, mentors, and the youth will be given an opportunity to ask the researcher questions concerning the study in order to make informed decisions. The contact details of the researcher will also be provided to the parents/legal guardians and the youth participating in the study. The privacy and confidentiality of the participants will be protected. No personal data will be used during the study and when the findings of the study will be reported. IRB approval will be obtained before engaging in any data collection.
Summary
The primary purpose of the proposed quantitative study is to determine if mentoring impacts significantly on middle school students’ self-perceptions. The study will use non-equivalent control group posttest-only design to compare self-perceptions between mentored and non-mentored middle school AA male students. There will be three dependent variables that will be measured at an ordinal level using Likert-type tools that have been validated and published. Data for the study will be collected using published tools and analyzed using IBM SPSS.
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Appendixes
Appendix A: Parental Consent Form
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHCENTRAL
CONSENT TO ACT AS A HUMAN PARTICIPANT: LONG FORM
Project Title:
Project Director:
Participant’s Name:
Date of Consent:
DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION OF PROCEDURES:
The goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of Kappa League mentorship program on middle school students. Participants will be surveyed about their beliefs on academic abilities, global self worth and college attendance. For this study, the word “college” refers to any type of schooling after high school that could lead to a degree (like a two-year community college or a four-year university). Participants will be given refreshments for their participation in the study.
RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS: The risks for participating in this study are minimal. It is possible, as with any survey, that some of the questions may raise concerns in the participant. If any discomfort is experienced, please remember that this is a voluntary process and the participant may stop taking the survey at any time.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS: This study may provide effective strategy for helping at-risk middle school students. This information may help educators, parents, other to better talk with students about college. In addition, the results of this study may help create programs designed to address any barriers to attending college or careers after high school.
CONTENT:
By signing this consent form, you agree that you understand the procedures and any risks and benefits involved in this research. You are free to refuse to participate or to withdraw you consent to participate in this research at any time without penalty or prejudge; your participation is entirely voluntary. Your privacy will be protected because you will not be identified by name as participant in this project. All surveys and content forms will be maintained in a locked file cabinet only accessible by the primary researcher. Data, including consent forms, surveys, and computer files, will be kept for a minimum of three years, after which it will be destroyed.
The research and this consent form have been approved by the University of Northcentral Institutional Review Board, which insures that research involving people follows federal regulations. Question regarding your rights as a participant in this project can be answered by calling XXXXXXX at (xxx) XXXXX. Questions regarding the research itself will be answered by Jesse Bryson (XXX) XXX-XXXX. Any new information that develops during the project will be provided to you if the information might affect your willingness to continue participation in the project.
By signing this form, you are agreeing to participate in the project described to you by Jesse Bryson.
Participant’s Signature* Date
*If participant is a minor or for some other reason unable to sign, complete the following:
Participant is a minor year old
Custodial Parents(s)/Guardian Signature(s) CustodialParent(s)/Guardian Signature(s)
Appendix B: Student Assent Form
We are doing a study about the effectiveness of the Kappa League program on middle school students. We hope to learn more about strategies, which are effective on students, positive reflection about self, abilities and capability to attend college.. Hopefully, your answer will help us develop school programs that will provide more information about continuing your education.
If you agree to participate in this study, you would complete three short surveys that ask about you, your beliefs about how you feel about your self, your beliefs in your ability to go to college and be successful there, and what you believe would happen if you actually did go to school. It is very important to remember that, for these questions, the word “college” means any type of school after high school. This might mean a community college like Florida South West College, or it could mean a four-year university like Florida Gulf Coast University.
You can ask questions at any time that you might have about this study. Also, if you decide at any time to stop answering questions, you are free to do so. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers and that we are very interested in what you think.
Signing this paper means that you have read this and want to be in the study. If you don’t want to be in the study, don’t sign this paper. This is your choice and the decision is yours.
Thank you for thinking about being a part of this study.
Signature of Participant (your name): ______________________ Date: ____________
Signature on Investigator:___________________________ Date:_____________
Appendix C: Survey Explanation
Explanation of Survey to be read when consent forms are distributed.
The goal of this study is to examine the college- going beliefs of middle school students. You will be surveyed about your beliefs related to things that might make it difficult to attend and complete college, your view on your academic abilities, feelings about your ability to go to college. I am really interested in what you believe that you can go to college and complete academic work. It does not matter what your school grades are or whether you want to go to college after high school. I want everyone’s opinions and thoughts.
For this study, the word “College” refers to any type of schooling after high school that could lead to a degree. This might mean a two-year community college or a four-year university. The surveys will take approximately 30-45 minutes to complete. You will be given a small gift for participating in the study.
Your answers will be strictly confidential and anonymous. No names are on the survey, and the permission forms are kept separately from the surveys. The risks for participating in this study are minimal. Your answers will help teachers and school counselors better talk with students about college going. In addition, the results of this study may help create programs designed to address your specific needs and questions about continuing your education.
If you choose to participate in this survey, you will need to take the permission slip and parent survey home to your family. Have a parent or guardian sign the paper and have them complete the parent survey. The, return both forms to the school by Wednesday. I will be back on that date to give out the survey to your class. We will complete the surveys during class time and you will receive your gift for participating at that time as well.
Thank you very much for considering participating in this study. Your participation will be very much appreciated.
Appendix D: Participant Instructions
Oral presentation to be read on day of data collection.
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this study. Please remember that you are not required to participate and may stop participating at any time. For those of you who do agree to participate, your help is truly appreciated. The purpose of this study is to examine your view on your academic abilities, how you view your self worth among others and your capability to attend college. You will complete a survey that ask you your beliefs about what would make it difficult to attend college, factors influence your decision to attend college, your beliefs in your ability to go to college and be successful there, and what you believe would happen if you actually did go on to school. It is very important to remember that, for these questions, the word “college” means any type of school after high school. This might mean a community college like Florida South Western College or it could mean a four-year university like Florida Gulf Coast University.
It is also very important that you answer every question on the surveys. Try not to skip any questions. Some of the questions ask you for two answers- for these, you will see two response columns. Be sure to answer both columns. Remember that there are no right or wrong answers and that we are very interested in what you think. If you become confused about one of the questions, feel free to ask me for help. Also, please do not put your name or anyone else’s name anywhere on the survey. This will help me make sure that your answers are anonymous. Your response will help you an others, like school counselors, teachers, and parents, know how to help middle schools students better prepare for attending college after high school. Again, thank you for your help with this study. Are there any questions at this time?
Appendix E: Supplement Form
Dear Parent/Guardian,
As part of this study on the effectiveness of the Kappa league Mentorship program, it is hoped that follow up data may be collected at a later time. This would involve being contacted about participating in the follow-up study, agreeing to participate if you would like, and then completing a second set of surveys about college-going beliefs. This follow-up may take place several months up to 5 years from now.
In addition, you may complete this form if you would like to request a summary of the results of this study.
Thank you,
Jesse Bryson
If you would like a summary of the results or would be willing to be contacted for a follow-up study, please place a check mark in the relevant spaces below.
___ Yes, I would be willing to be contacted about a follow-up study.
___ Yes, I would like a summary of the research results.
PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY
Student Name: ____________________________
Parent/Guardian: ________________________________
Address: ___________________________________________
Current School: _______________________________________
E-Mail Address: ___________________________________________
_____ No, I would not like to be contacted (DO NOT FILL IN NAME/ADDRESS)
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