International Comparative Research on Youth Mentoring Relationship

Youth mentoring is a one-to-one supportive intervention for disadvantaged children and youth. It became popular in the past decades as a cost efficient intervention and as an important element in children and youth social support structures. Such popularity is owed to consistent findings that the positive influence of non-parental adult supporters or “mentors” leads to positive outcomes for children and adolescents in high-risk settings.

Currently, mentoring is the latest in a long line of interventions with at risk children and young people, which is believed to hold considerable promise. The key factor of the intervention is the quality of the mentoring relationship, which the mentoring program hopes to create and supervise. The mentor has a key role when approaching the child and developing a quality, beneficial and efficient mentoring relationship. However, not all formal mentoring relationships within mentoring programs are efficient and some of them can be even harmful (Grossman, Rhodes, 2002). The quality of mentoring relationships as well as the ethical issues of failed mentoring relationships have become a topic in the field of mentoring in the recent years (Spencer, 2006, 2007, 2009; Rhodes, Liang, Spencer, 2009).

The principle of formal quality mentoring, in terms of what mentors provide in developing quality relationships and helping children to improve their development, has remained unanswered by the research until nowadays. Similarly, the mentor's approach and the participator’s level of satisfaction in the relationship, as the reasons why mentoring relationships fail and associated ethical issues and dilemmas, are not sufficiently clarified by contemporary research either.

The qualitative comparative study on the mentoring relationship will focus on: the mentors’ approach styles, associated with the level and sources of mentors’ satisfaction which develops mentoring relationships; and the feedback on the mentor’s approach styles; developed relationship’s characteristics; level of satisfaction and perceived benefits of mentoring from the children’s point of view. Therefore, in partnership with Charles University, Faculty of Humanities; the mentoring program Big Brothers Big Sisters in Ireland, and the Big Brothers Big Sisters/5P in the Czech Republic, the key questions addressed will be:

• What mentors do that is perceived as beneficial by children in formal mentoring relationship?
• How mentors approach children and develop mentoring relationship distinct characteristics?
• How children perceive and experience the relationship under specific mentors’ approach styles?
• What are the risks and dilemmas of mentoring for mentors and how these dilemmas influence mentors' approach style?

The study will compare mentors’ developmental styles in the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring programs in Ireland and the Czech Republic. As a result, the cultural differences in mentors’ developmental styles and experiences of these styles by service users will contribute to the good practice and policy implications in European mentoring youth services.

For further information please contact:

Tereza Brumovská

+353 91 49 5736

E-Mail: t.brumovska1@nuigalway.ie