The role of family relationships in youth mentoring: An ecological perspective

Sarah K. Downey, Michael D. Lyons and Joanna L. Williams

Children and Youth Services Review, 2022, vol. 138, issue C

Abstract: Mentoring programs have historically focused on the relationship between the mentor and mentee as the primary means for supporting academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes among youth participating in these programs. However, research also indicates that other significant relationships, like family relationships, are important in promoting positive youth outcomes. The current exploratory study takes an ecological approach by examining family relationships as a potential moderator of youth mentoring outcomes. Participants were adolescent girls who participated in a year-long, gender-specific, school-based mentoring program (n = 69), or served as controls (n = 59). Data were collected from pre- and post-intervention surveys. Multiple regression analyses tested for an interaction between participants’ family relationship characteristics and their intervention status on various social-emotional, academic, and behavioral outcomes. Results indicated that higher levels of family support significantly predicted higher youth academic plans, and lower family deviant beliefs significantly predicted fewer delinquent behaviors; however, the interactions between family and intervention status were not significant. Findings suggest that family relationship characteristics merit attention when seeking to promote youth outcomes. Implications include supporting ecological frameworks for mentoring by refining targets of mentoring interventions to consider the role of family factors.

Keywords: Mentoring; Ecological; Family relationships; Youth development; Youth outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074092200144X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:138:y:2022:i:c:s019074092200144x

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106508

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().