Building Blocks of Quality Mentoring Programs

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Mentoring Impacts

Impacts Mentoring programs are built on the belief that mentoring makes a difference in the lives of young people. But what differences, specifically, can mentoring make? Your program will need to define the types of outcomes that it is trying to achieve, and then evaluate whether it is meeting these targets.

Research can tell us much about the particular results that quality mentoring programs can have. To check whether your expectations of mentoring are realistic, see if you can determine the accurate research results in this small sampling of studies:

A Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America (Tierney and Grossman, 1995) determined that Little Brothers and Sisters who met regularly for a year with their mentors showed numerous outcomes that were more positive than those of a control group. The study revealed that the mentored children showed all but which one of the following outcomes?

(A) They were 46 % less likely to begin using illegal drugs than the control group
(B) They were 51% more likely to participate in social and cultural activities
(C) They were 27 % less likely to begin using alcohol
(D) They were 52% less likely to skip school
(E) They were 32% less likely to hit someone
(F) They were more trusting of their parents or guardians and less likely to lie to them
(G) They felt more supported and less criticized by their peers and friends

A study published in The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (Beier, Rosenfeld, Spitalny, Zansky and Bontempo,1999) examined whether adolescents who have mentors are less likely to engage in high-risk behavior than those without mentors. The study looked at five high-risk behaviors, including smoking, illegal drug use, alcohol use, having sex with more than one partner in the past six months, and carrying weapons. The study found that adolescents with mentors were significantly less likely to participate in how many of these high-risk behaviors?

(A) Two out of five
(B) Three out of five
(C) Four out of five
(D) Five out of five

Big Brothers of Ontario, through a 1994 program evaluation entitled "Project Impact", examined outcomes for Little Brothers more than a decade after they were matched with a Big Brother. The research results indicated that the longer a Little Brother stayed in the program, and the better the relationship he enjoyed with his Big Brother, the more likely he was to:

(A) Be satisfied with his experience in the program

(B) Have graduated from college or university

(D) All of the above

(E) None of the above

A Commonwealth Fund survey (McLearn, Colasanto and Schoen, 1998) found that 83% of Mentees? or Mentors? said they learned or gained something through their experience in a mentoring relationship, including feeling that they were a better person, increased patience, friendship, a feeling of effectiveness, and new skills such as listening.

A Public/Private Ventures study (Herrara, Sipe and McClanahan, 2000) of school based mentoring programs found that mentors in these programs report that their relationships with youth are of Higher?, Lower? or Similar? quality as compared to those observed among mentors in traditional community based mentoring programs.

As you can see, mentoring programs can have remarkable success. Now, take the first step in determining whether your program shares in this success, by learning the basics of evaluating your program.

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