Research Alert: What Organizations Can Do to Retain Mentors
Editor’s note: From time to time on the NMRC Blog we will cross-post announcements about research studies on mentoring drawing from the research listserv run by NMRC Research Board Chair Dr. David DuBois.
In her recent PhD dissertation, Jennifer K. Stukey investigated which practices of mentoring organizations contribute to mentor retention. This is important work, because as other recent research indicates, dissolved mentoring relationships can have adverse effects on youth. In addition, Stukey states that mentees reap the most benefits from their mentoring relationships when the relationships last more than one year. Thus, Stukey set out to find what specific methods practiced by mentoring organizations correlate with higher mentor retention.
In her analysis of secondary data collected from Big Brothers Big Sisters, Stukey found that the frequency of face-to-face communication and support from the mentoring agency to mentors correlated positively with mentor retention of more than one year.
Does your organization find face-to-face communication with mentors to be important? For organizations that engage with mentors remotely (via phone and email), what other mentor retention strategies does your organization use, and why?
Article: Stukey, Jennifer. (2015). Predictive Factors of Organizational Support Communication in Volunteer Mentor Retention (Doctoral Dissertation). Walden University, Minnesota.
You can access this article, and/or join Dr. David DuBois’s youth mentoring research and practice listserv by emailing Dr. DuBois at dldubois@uic.edu.