YouthFriends: outcomes from a school-based mentoring program.
This evaluation explores the effectiveness of school-based mentoring as a universal prevention strategy. The impact of mentoring on students displaying risk factors is also addressed. The evaluation of YouthFriends, a school-based mentoring program, employed a pretest-posttest control group design. Students (n = 170) across five school districts provided data on eight dependent variables. At posttest, there was a statistically significant difference favoring YouthFriends over controls on sense of school membership. In addition, for students who had low scores at baseline, results indicated a statistically significant improvement unique to YouthFriends on community connectedness and goal-setting. Analyses of students' academic performance also indicated a positive effect for those YouthFriends who had low grades at baseline. Editors' Strategic Implications: Important lessons are provided for school administrators and mentoring program staff and evaluators. As a universal prevention program, school-based mentoring may produce few (and small) short-term effects. A greater understanding of the effects of dosage and quality of the mentoring is needed as we seek to evaluate the efficacy of school-based mentoring across a variety of student risk levels.
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. portwoods@umkc.edu
Sharon G
SG
Portwood
Penny M
PM
Ayers
Kelly E
KE
Kinnison
Robert G
RG
Waris
Daniel L
DL
Wise
D005260:Female; D033062:Friends; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008611:Mentors; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012572:School Health Services; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires