Mentoring in Context: Exploring How the Broader Ecology of Relationships in Youths' Lives Influences School-Based Mentoring Impacts and Processes

Abstract

Research on school-based mentoring (SBM) suggests that the intervention can produce modest impacts on a range of youth outcomes (Wheeler, Keller, & DuBois, 2010). Impacts may vary considerably, however, based on individual youth characteristics. Since mentoring is a relationship-based intervention, it is likely that youth’s relationships play a particularly key role in their experience of mentoring and the benefits they derive from mentoring. Drawing on data from a national, random assignment impact evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) SBM programs, this poster will present the results from three studies exploring the role of the broader ecology of relationships in youths’ lives on the impacts and processes of change in SBM. The first study examined whether the quality of youth’s pre-intervention relationships with their parents, teachers and peers influenced impacts of mentoring. The second and third study explored the pathways through which SBM relationships may be associated with improvements in outcomes.

Methods:

Participants (N = 1,139) were recruited from ten BBBS SBM agencies across the country and include youth in grades 4 through 9. Fifty-four percent were female, and 37% percent reported as White, 23% as Hispanic/Latino, 18% as Black/African American, 6% as Native American, 1% as Asian/Pacific Islander, 13% as mixed race, and 3% as other. Youth from the control group and the treatment group and their teachers completed baseline surveys at the beginning of the school year and follow-up surveys near the end of the school year measuring academic, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

Results:

In the first study, latent profile analysis was conducted on youth-reported measures of baseline parent, teacher, and peer relationships to reveal three youth profiles: Relationally Vulnerable, Relationally Adequate, and Relationally Strong. Results indicated that Relationally Adequate youth showed the greatest benefits from mentoring, while youth in the Relationally Vulnerable and Relationally Strong profiles showed few to no impacts compared to similar youth in the control group. In the second study, structural equation modeling showed that mentoring relationship quality was significantly associated with positive changes in youths’ relationships with parents and teachers. Higher quality relationships with parents and teachers, in turn, were significantly associated with better youth outcomes. Mediation analysis found that mentoring relationship quality was indirectly associated with some of the outcomes through its association with improved parent and teacher relationships. In the third study, initial analyses suggest that mentoring relationships may cause youth to become less sensitive to rejection, which may, in turn, improve teacher and peer relationships. Implications for research and practice will be discussed.