Youth Initiated Mentoring: A Meta-analytic Study of a Hybrid Approach to Youth Mentoring
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EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Youth Initiated Mentoring: A Meta-analytic Study of a Hybrid Approach to Youth Mentoring Levi van Dam1 Danielle Blom1 Esma Kara1 Mark Assink1 Geert-Jan Stams1 Sarah Schwartz2 Jean Rhodes3 ●
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Received: 31 July 2020 / Accepted: 14 October 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Youth initiated mentoring is a hybrid approach that empowers youth to identify and recruit natural mentors, potentially combining the strengths of informal mentoring relationships with the infrastructure and support provided by formal mentoring programs. This meta-analytic review examined the association between youth-initiated programs and youth outcomes across four domains: academic and vocational functioning, social-emotional development, physical health, and psychosocial problems. Results indicated that youth-initiated programs are significantly associated with positive youth outcomes. There was a small-to-medium effect size of g = 0.30 for youth-initiated programs overall, which was based on 14 studies with 11 independent samples (3594 youth and 169 effect sizes) from 2006 to 2019. The effect size was somewhat larger (g = 0.40) when controlling for possible selection bias, and was moderated by participant gender and year of publication. Implications for theory and practice regarding this relatively new approach to mentoring are discussed. Keywords
Meta-analysis Youth mentoring Youth initiated mentoring Natural mentoring Positive youth development ●
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Introduction A mentoring relationship is generally characterized as a supportive connection between an older or more experienced individual and a younger or less experienced mentee or protégé over time (Rhodes 2002). This conceptualization of youth mentoring encompasses approaches that can vary in structure and context, ranging from formal relationships —in which mentees and mentors are matched and monitored through programs that provide guidelines (e.g., frequency and duration of contact)—to informal or natural mentoring relationships, which form organically between youth and older individuals within their existing social networks. In this study, the effectiveness of a new hybrid approach to mentoring was studied. In youth initiated mentoring (YIM) models, programs provide scaffolding and
* Jean Rhodes [email protected] 1
Department of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Department of Psychology, Suffolk University, Boston, MA, USA
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Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, USA
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support for youth to identify and recruit a mentor from their existing social network. Youth mentoring programs can vary widely, but most seek to create caring relationships between young people (or mentees) and more experienced nonparental adults (mentors). Although such programs are widespread and serve millions of children each year (Raposa et al. 2017), research on their effectiveness has revealed relati
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