Prof. Dr. Geert Jan Stams University of Amsterdam Mentoring Matters Prof. Dr. Geert Jan Stams University of Amsterdam

Informal and formal mentoring relationships Informal or natural mentoring relationships form organically between youth and older individuals within their existing social networks Formal mentoring relationships are established through a program that matches mentees and mentors and outlines specific expectations about the relationship (e.g., objective, frequency and duration of contact)

What works in mentoring? Mentors may provide support that enhances youth’s sense of belonging and mattering with significant others By being a companion for youths and providing reliable support, mentors may establish and maintain resilience Through social interactions with mentors, adolescents acquire and refine new cognitive skills, and become more receptive to adult instructions and perspectives When identity development becomes central, mentor guidance may help shift youths’ conceptions of both their current and future identities and help them develop ideas of what they might become or would like to become in the future Mentors can provide a protective role for youth who have had a history of difficult or unsatisfactory relationships By modeling, caring, and providing emotional support, mentors can challenge negative views that some youth may hold of themselves and others, and let them experience that positive relationships with adults are possible. Mentors may function as secondary attachment figures who satisfy their emotional and social needs

What Five Decades of Research Tells Us About the Effects of Youth Psychological Therapy: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis and Implications for Science and Practice (Weisz et al., 2017)

Meta-Analyses Mentoring Van Dam, L., Smit, D., Wildschut, B., Branje, S. J. T., Rhodes, J. E., Assink, M., & Stams, G. J. J. M. (2018). Does Natural Mentoring Matter? A Multilevel Meta‐analysis on the Association Between Natural Mentoring and Youth Outcomes. American Journal of Community Psychology, 62(1-2), 203-220 Raposa, E. B., Rhodes, J., Stams, G.J., Card, N., Burton, S., Schwartz, S., Sykes, L.Y., Kanchewa, S., Kupersmidt, J., and Hussain, S. (2019). The effects of youth mentoring programs: A meta-analysis of outcome studies. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. A greater percentage of helping professionals was associated with larger effects in both meta-analyses

Targeted versus Non-targeted Formal Mentoring The median average effect of universal prevention programs for various outcomes tend to fall within the range of 4% to 9% improvement in youth outcomes. Emily E. Tanner-Smith, Joseph A. Durlak, & Robert A. Marx (2018) Empirically Based Mean Effect Size Distributions for Universal Prevention Programs Targeting School-Aged Youth: A Review of Meta-Analyses. Prevention Science , 19, 1091–1101 Jean Rhodes

Future Research To examine the effect of relationship quality in formal mentoring relationships on youth outcomes To examine whether mentoring can increase treatment motivation, susceptibility to treatment, and treatment adherence To examine whether mentoring can increase the effectiveness of established psychological therapy For instance, Levi van Dam and others showed that Youth Initiated Mentoring (YIM) was effective in preventing residential care in youth with complex needs receiving established psychological therapy

Mentoring Matters