Effectiveness of mentoring programs for youth: A meta-analytic review

In the citing paper

“In the DuBois et al. review (2002), the overall category of problem behavior, which includes delinquency, had the largest effect sizes of any outcome category.”

In the citing paper

“Mentoring is one of the most commonly used interventions to prevent, divert, and remediate youth engaged in, or thought to be at risk for delinquent behavior, school failure, aggression, or other antisocial behavior.”

In the citing paper

“et al. (2002, 2011) recognized many of the issues related to advancing and deepening understanding of mentoring effects and incorporated coding of several of these features into their meta-analysis.”

In the citing paper

“In DuBois et al. (2002), they denoted an index of what could be considered best practices in youth mentoring based on recommendations of prior reviews and recommendations for establishing effective mentoring programs, such as the National Mentoring Working Group (1991) and coded to the extent possible from source data, each intervention report (DuBois et al., 2002).”

In the citing paper

“These codes were then amalgamated into an overall index of extent of desired features.”

In the citing paper

“DuBois et al. (2002) excluded interventions using professional providers, with the exception that some studies that employed mental health professionals as mentors were included under certain conditions (see DuBois et al., 2002;Rhodes, 2002 for those criteria).”

In the citing paper

“They included 11 program features to mark how methodic inclusion in the program was, whether mentors and mentees are matched on demographic characteristics, how structured or prescribed activities were, and the frequency or extent of contact.”

In the citing paper

“In a meta-analysis of mentoring programs, the effect size estimate was 0.18 (DuBois et al., 2002), which would bring students who were at the 50th percentile to the 57th percentile.”

In the citing paper

“DuBois and colleagues (2002) found that the effect size for mentoring was only .10, on average, for emotional/psychological outcomes, but doubled in size to .22 for career/employment outcomes.”

In the citing paper

“The effect size observed in these analyses is remarkably consistent with past comprehensive meta-analyses of youth mentoring, which have shown overall effect sizes ranging from .18 to .21 (DuBois et al. 2002; 2011).”

In the citing paper

“mentors who have more experience in helping roles or professions (e.g., counselor, social worker, therapist) have been found to be more effective than those with non-helping backgrounds, both in formal mentoring relationships (DuBois et al. 2002) and in naturallyoccurring or informal mentoring relationships (Van Dam et al. 2017).”

In the citing paper

“two previous meta-analyses suggesting that youth with higher levels of baseline risk, particularly environmental risk (e.g., poverty, neighborhood violence) may bene fi t more from mentoring (DuBois et al. 2011; DuBois et al. 2002).”

In the citing paper

“however, program length was also not a signi fi cant predictor of outcomes in earlier meta-analyses (DuBois et al. 2002, 2011).”

In the citing paper

“For example, some metaanalyses have shown relatively low effect sizes for psychological/emotional outcomes (DuBois et al. 2002, 2011), but relatively strong effects of mentoring on academic problems (DuBois et al. 2011).”

In the citing paper

“Yet, other studies have shown stronger outcomes for programs serving youth with greater levels of individual and environmental risk (DuBois et al., 2011), and for youth who initially report higher risk for negative outcomes (DuBois et al., 2002; Poon, 2019)”

In the citing paper

“Meta-analyses of extant evaluations of mentoring programs have supported their potential to promote improved outcomes for participating youth in areas such as academics, social competence, and problem behavior avoidance (for reviews, see DuBois et al., 2002;DuBois et al., 2011;Tolan et al., 2014;Raposa et al., 2019).”

In the citing paper

“Because more consistent and frequent mentor-youth contact is associated with greater youth benefits (DuBois et al., 2002;Karcher, 2005)”

In the citing paper

“Therefore, the duration of the mentoring dyad and its consistency have been identified as critical features [12,32].”

In the citing paper

“Meta-analyses of quasi-experimental and experimental evaluations confirm the potential of CBM relationships, involving high-risk young people to progress in the socioemotional, behavioral, and academic domains [12,13,14] and in reducing delinquent and aggressive behavior [15,16].”

In the citing paper

“However, DuBois et al.’s [12] meta-analysis of 55 studies conducted in the context of CBM, SBM, and vocational mentoring did not find an observed effect of mentoring length.”

In the citing paper

“Nevertheless, these meta-analyses have only identified small overall positive effects, with standardized mean difference effect sizes (d), from 0.18 to 0.21 in DuBois et al. [12,13] from 0.11 to 0.29 in Tolan et al. [16], and 0.21 in Raposa et al. [17].”

In the citing paper

“For instance, DuBois et al.’s meta-analyses [12,13] indicated that the average frequency of contact did not serve as a significant moderator of effect size.”

In the citing paper

“However, these studies showed that mentoring programs in which mentors embraced a more goal-directed interaction, using “teaching,” “coaching (i.e., instructing and training),” or “advocacy” (i.e., teaching youth to promote interests and rights) techniques [13] and applied structured mentor-mentees activities [12] led to more substantive effects than did programs not facilitating this role.”

In the citing paper

“No benefit was found for programs that adopted a primary emphasis on instrumental aims or when there was a focus on providing specific skills training within a structured framework [12,13].”

In the citing paper

“Mentors with more experience in helping roles with young people or working in allied professions (e.g., counselor, social worker, therapist) were found to be more effective than those with non-helping backgrounds, as reflected in meta-analyses with various types of programs [12,13].”

In the citing paper

“However, these proximal benefits did not translate into differences in terms of consistent outcomes [12,13,33,34,45,70,171].”

In the citing paper

“guidance and the program’s forms of outreach with the mentees’ parents and guardians have been identified as central practices that shape the relationship, as reported in DuBois et al.’s [12] meta-analysis.”

In the citing paper

“Program practices may influence the mentoring relationship incorporated within them [12,175].”

In the citing paper

“The meta‐analysis on the presence of a natural mentor and youth outcomes yielded somewhat larger effect sizes for mentors with a helping profession background (e.g., teacher, guidance counselor, minister/priest/rabbi, religious leader, doctor/therapist), which may reflect the particular salience of caring teachers or guidance counselors in educational and community settings (DuBois, Holloway, V”

In the citing paper

“On the other hand, natural mentors may serve as compensatory resources for youth from backgrounds of risk or for whom parents may not be fully engaged in their lives (Britner, Balcazar, Blechman, Blinn‐Pike, & Larose, 2006; DuBois et al., 2002; Erickson et al., 2009).”