Seeking Help and Mentorship During the Transition to College: A Mixed-Methods Investigation among First-Generation Students

• In Event: Examining Youth Mentorship Across Diverse Contexts

Abstract

Introduction: First-generation college students are half as likely to complete Bachelor’s degrees compared to continuing-generation students (RTI International, 2019). First-gen students face a range of barriers, including unfamiliarity with social norms, role expectations, and communication patterns in college, exacerbating feelings of alienation (Yee, 2016). Mentoring relationships with supportive non-parent adults can provide first-gen students with the resources and knowledge they need to navigate college campuses, promoting self-efficacy and sense of belonging (Crisp, 2010). Yet, little is known about the size and composition of students’ mentoring networks, functional differences among mentors (e.g., long-standing vs. newly acquired mentors), processes through which mentoring relationships form, and how students’ help-seeking attitudes affect the extent to which they acquire and utilize mentoring support.
Study Population: First-year, first-generation college students at a mid-sized, public, commuter university in New England were invited to participate, resulting in a sample of 176 (mean age=18.3).
Methodology: At the beginning and end of their first year of college (Fall 2018 and Spring 2019), students completed baseline and follow-up surveys containing validated measures of help-seeking attitudes, mentoring relationships, and well-being. A subsample (n=25) completed in-depth qualitative interviews, reflecting upon their experiences navigating the college transition, sources of social support, attitudes and decision-making around help-seeking, and the nature and functions of mentoring relationships.

Analyses and Hypotheses: Descriptive analyses examined the size and composition of mentoring networks. Path analyses evaluated a mediational model hypothesizing that students’ positive help-seeking beliefs and baseline mentoring support would promote the retention of mentoring support from long-standing mentors and the acquisition of support from new, college-based mentors, which in turn would promote students’ college-related self-efficacy and psychological sense of school membership (Figure 1).

A faculty-student team analyzed interview transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2019), without a priori hypotheses, to co-construct themes inductively.

Results: At both timepoints, approximately 60% of participants reported having any mentor, and 45% reported having multiple mentors. From baseline to end-of-year follow-up, a smaller proportion of mentors were pre-college school personnel (e.g., former teachers), replaced by a larger proportion of university faculty/staff.

In path analyses (controlling for demographics, extraversion, ACT/SAT scores, baseline self-efficacy), cumulative support from retained mentors was associated with college self-efficacy, while cumulative support from newly acquired mentors was associated with psychological sense of school membership. Positive help-seeking attitudes were associated with self-efficacy and sense of school membership but were not mediated by mentoring support (Figure 1).

Qualitative analyses are nearing completion (currently in Phase 4 of 6, see Braun & Clark, 2019) and have produced the following working themes. First-gen students described an ongoing dilemma of needing help navigating college, while feeling that help-seeking undermines their sense of autonomy, pride, and belonging. Therefore, decisions about help-seeking were highly deliberate. First-gen students decided to seek help when perceived benefits outweighed psychological costs, when they could identify somebody possessing needed resources, and when that person was accessible and approachable. Students only considered certain relationships to meet the threshold of mentorship, which required recurrent support across multiple domains and attunement to changing needs.

Authors

• Matthew A Hagler, Francis Marion University
  Presenting Author

• Kristen Christensen

• Renesha Johnson

• Leah Snipe

• Jean Rhodes