What Impact Does Group Mentoring Have on Mentee Attitudes, Beliefs, and Actions? Analysis of a National Survey

• In Event: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Group Mentoring at the Boys & Girls Clubs: Results from a Four Year Study

Abstract

While traditional mentoring has proven to be an effective means to enact positive behavioral change in at-risk youth, research on its effects is limited and results are in most cases limited to correlational findings. Numerous attempts have been made at evaluating nontraditional mentoring programs. However, similar to research and evaluation of traditional mentoring, these studies produced mainly correlational evidence. Thus, causal evidence of effectiveness of nontraditional mentoring programs has not been provided. A national four year study that includes 210 randomly selected clubs, approximately 3200 mentees, and approximately 1500 mentors collected mentee attitudinal data and mentor assessment of mentee data three times per year. Surveys were based upon prior mentoring and juvenile delinquent behavior research. Data was collected on ordinal rating scales and was converted to interval scales using Rasch modeling which then allowed for the performance of multivariate analysis where members are clustered within BGCA sites, by demographics, and within group mentoring programs. This session illustrates the process of survey development and verification as well as presents findings from the analysis.

Author

• Christine Fox, Inference, LLC