“It's Not What I Expected”

Although estimates are that only about half of youth mentoring relationships established through formal programs last beyond a few months, almost no attention has been paid to understanding mentoring relationship failures. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 adult and 11 adolescent male and female participants in a community-based one-to-one mentoring program whose relationships ended early. Line-by-line coding and a narrative approach to a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts yielded six salient factors that contributed to the demise of these mentoring relationships: (a) mentor or protégé abandonment, (b) perceived lack of protégé motivation, (c) unfulfilled expectations, (d) deficiencies in mentor relational skills, including the inability to bridge cultural divides, (e) family interference, and (f) inadequate agency support.

[1]  W. Brad Johnson,et al.  Toward a typology of mentorship dysfunction in graduate school. , 2002 .

[2]  Bernadette Sánchez,et al.  Descriptive profile of the mentorship relationships of Latino adolescents , 1999 .

[3]  S. McManus,et al.  The Protege's Perspective Regarding Negative Mentoring Experiences: The Development of a Taxonomy , 2000 .

[4]  J. Lounsbury,et al.  A comparison of expectations of volunteers, children, and parents in a big brother‐big sister program , 1981 .

[5]  Belle Rose Ragins,et al.  Diversified Mentoring Relationships in Organizations: A Power Perspective , 1997 .

[6]  Terri A. Scandura,et al.  Dysfunctional Mentoring Relationships and Outcomes , 1998 .

[7]  Brendali F. Reis,et al.  Reducing psychotherapy dropouts: Maximizing perspective convergence in the psychotherapy dyad. , 1999 .

[8]  Jeffrey C. Valentine,et al.  Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs for Youth: A Meta-Analytic Review , 2002, American journal of community psychology.

[9]  Renée Spencer,et al.  Understanding the Mentoring Process between Adolescents and Adults , 2006 .

[10]  J. Rhodes,et al.  Volunteer Mentoring Relationships With Minority Youth: An Analysis of Same‐ Versus Cross‐Race Matches1 , 2002 .

[11]  Michael J. Karcher.  The effects of developmental mentoring and high school mentors' attendance on their younger mentees' self‐esteem, social skills, and connectedness , 2005 .

[12]  Madonna G. Constantine,et al.  Predictors of Satisfaction with Counseling: Racial and Ethnic Minority Clients' Attitudes toward Counseling and Ratings of Their Counselors' General and Multicultural Counseling Competence. , 2002 .

[13]  Derald Wing Sue,et al.  Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice , 2002 .

[14]  B. Liang,et al.  Diversity and Youth Mentoring Relationships , 2008 .

[15]  C. Lutz,et al.  Perceived Similarity, Expectation-Reality Discrepancies, and Mentors' Expressed Intention to Remain in Big Brothers/Big Sisters Programs , 2004 .

[16]  N. Way.  Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers. Qualitative Studies in Psychology. , 1998 .

[17]  J. Rhodes,et al.  Mentor Relationships And The Career Development Of Pregnant And Parenting African-American Teenagers , 1995, Psychology of women quarterly.

[18]  A. Bandura.  Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy.

[19]  R. Heffer,et al.  The Natural Mentors of Adolescent Children of Alcoholics (COAs): Implications for Preventive Practices , 2002, Journal of Primary Prevention.

[20]  Matthew B. Miles,et al.  Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook , 1994 .

[21]  J. Rhodes.  Stand by Me , 2002 .

[22]  N. Leffert,et al.  Developmental Assets: A Synthesis of the Scientific Research on Adolescent Development , 2004 .

[23]  K. Charmaz,et al.  Constructing Grounded Theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis Kathy Charmaz Constructing Grounded Theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis Sage 224 £19.99 0761973532 0761973532 [Formula: see text]. , 2006, Nurse researcher.

[24]  Derald Wing Sue,et al.  Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice, 5th ed. , 2003 .

[25]  David L. DuBois,et al.  Youth Mentoring: Theory, Research, and Practice. , 2005 .

[26]  J. Rhodes,et al.  Promoting Successful Youth Mentoring Relationships: A Preliminary Screening Questionnaire , 2005, Journal of Primary Prevention.

[27]  J. Rhodes,et al.  The Test of Time: Predictors and Effects of Duration in Youth Mentoring Relationships , 2002, American journal of community psychology.

[28]  Joseph P. Tierney,et al.  Does Mentoring Work? , 1998 .