Mentoring in the Academic Medical Setting: The Gender Gap

Mentoring is an essential part of success in the academic medical center. The provision of effective mentoring is key to the success of the increasing numbers of women entering medicine. However, the gender distribution within the hierarchy of medicine has not changed in that the power still resides with men in the system. Currently, men are attempting to mentor women, and so as the proportion of women in medicine continues to grow, they will become more influential in this setting and will become increasingly responsible for providing mentoring to men. In either case, effective communication across gender lines is an essential aspect of the mentoring process. Psychologists in academic medical settings can provide guidance to faculty and staff on the critical aspects of social development and communication, which may affect how women and men are mentored and the success of this mentoring process, whether across or within gender lines.     

A Religious Diversity Tale: A Multi-Faith Case Study

This article examines the creation of a network of diverse religious leadership in a Midwest suburb where the intersection of religion and national pride fomented a community-wide conflict. Activated during a heated controversy over displaying a Christmas tree in a public school, the Network became a laboratory for testing viable strategies for community healing. The case of a Jewish student suspended for fighting when taunted for not singing Christmas Carols became a catalyst for debating what is religious, what is secular, and what is culturally American. The interaction of the key players is noted; educators, religious leaders, students and their families, particularly the mothers who regularly interacted across religious boundaries. The article describes the Network's experiment with deploying resources that accommodated diverse experiences of religion and patriotism, historically and culturally, within an American context.     

The test of time: predictors and effects of duration in youth mentoring relationships

The effects and predictors of duration in youth mentor relationships were examined. The study included 1,138 young, urban adolescents (Mean age = 12.25, all of whom applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters programs. The adolescents were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group, and administered questions at baseline and 18 months later. Adolescents in relationships that lasted a year or longer reported the largest number of improvements, with progressively fewer effects emerging among youth who were in relationships that terminated earlier. Adolescents who were in relationships that terminated within a very short period of time reported decrements in several indicators of functioning. Older adolescents, as well as those who had been referred for services or had sustained emotional, sexual or physical abuse, were most likely to be in early terminating relationships, as were married volunteers aged 26–30 and those with lower incomes. Several dyadic factors were also found to be related to earlier terminations, including race, gender, and relationship quality.     

Commentary on ‘mentoring and the impact of the research climate’

Conclusions First of all, I would like to commend Roberts and colleagues for taking on a difficult but very important topic. It would be valuable if someone could follow up with a broader sample of universities and laboratories — paying careful attention to possible sampling and non-sampling errors. In general, I recommend that mentors explicitly both learn and teach ethical theory and practice within the context of their scientist development programs. Finally, while it is important to emphasize sound and ethical research standards and processes in mentoring programs, this should not be at the expense of an appropriate emphasis on skills essential to professional competitiveness, such as responsible, effective publication, grant winning, and demonstrably strong performance on the grants won. Dr. Gardenier is a survey statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The views presented are his personal opinions only.     

Informal versus formal mathematics

We discuss Kunen’s algorithmic implementation of a proof for the Paris–Harrington theorem, and the author’s and da Costa’s proposed “exotic” formulation for the P = NP hypothesis. Out of those two examples we ponder the relation between mathematics within an axiomatic framework, and intuitive or informal mathematics. The author is Visiting Researcher at IEA/USP, Professor of Communications, Emeritus, at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, and a full member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy.     

Lunch Buddy Mentoring for Children Victimized by Peers: Two Pilot Studies

The authors describe two pilot studies examining the potential benefits of Lunch Buddy (LB) mentoring, a manualized approach to school-based mentoring. LB mentoring takes place during the school lunch period and is designed to promote positive changes in children's peer relationships. In both studies, changes in peer victimization were assessed after one and three semesters of LB mentoring. In the first study, LB mentors were paired with elementary school children (N = 24) identified by child and teacher reports as victimized by peers. Results revealed significant declines in self- and teacher-rated victimization after one and three semesters of mentoring. In the second study, LB mentors were paired with victimized children who also engaged in bullying behavior (N = 23). Results indicated significant declines in self- and teacher-ratings of peer victimization after three semesters of mentoring. In both studies, ratings of perceived harm were low and ratings of satisfaction were high. Discussed are the implications of these findings for future research and for efforts to develop a nonharmful way to help children who are repeatedly victimized.     

The Willingness of Military Members to Seek Help: The Role of Social Involvement and Social Responsibility

Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change, we use data from a large sample of active‐duty Air Force members to examine the direct and indirect influence of social involvement and social responsibility on willingness to seek help in times of need via trust in formal systems and informal supports. Group comparisons are conducted between junior male, junior female, senior male, and senior female service members. The key mediational path in the model for all groups is the connection between social involvement and willingness to seek help via trust in formal systems. These results can inform both unit‐ and community‐level interventions intended to increase the likelihood that active‐duty AF members will seek help in times of need.     

Training Young Adult Peers in a Mobile Motivational Interviewing‐Based Mentoring Approach to Upstream HIV Prevention

Mentoring relationships are characterized by a sustained, high quality, and skill‐building relationship between a protégé and mentor (Handbook of Youth Mentoring, Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014). Within prevention science, youth mentoring programs emphasize creating a specific context that benefits a young person. Program‐sponsored relationships between youth and adults allow for creating a mentor–mentee partnership, but do not require the establishment of a strong bond in order to deliver prevention‐focused activities and experiences (Handbook of Youth Mentoring, Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014). Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a counseling style used widely to promote health behavior change and in prevention interventions. As part of an upstream approach to HIV prevention, we combined mentoring and MI by training peer mentors to use MI skills in their interactions as part of a large RCT of a mobile life skills intervention for adolescent men who have sex with men (AMSM). Our training model developed for training peer mentors in MI skills resulted in peers reaching and exceeding established MI fidelity thresholds (e.g., mean percentage of complex reflections = 80%, mean reflection to question ratio = 2.2:1). We offer reflections on lessons learned and future directions for those researchers and practitioners who may benefit from adapting this blended approach for mentoring AMSM.     

Does Natural Mentoring Matter? A Multilevel Meta‐analysis on the Association Between Natural Mentoring and Youth Outcomes

In this meta‐analytic review, we examined the relation between natural mentoring and youth outcomes in four domains: academic and vocational functioning, social‐emotional development, physical health, and psychosocial problems. Natural mentoring relationships are thought to foster positive youth development and buffer against the risks associated with the tumultuous years of adolescence. Two separate meta‐analyses were conducted on the presence of a natural mentor and the quality of the natural mentoring relationship, including thirty studies from 1992 to present. The findings indicated that the presence of a natural mentor was significantly associated with positive youth outcomes (r = .106). A larger effect size was found for the quality of the natural mentoring relationship in terms of relatedness, social support, and autonomy support (r = .208). The largest effect sizes were found for social‐emotional development and academic and vocational functioning. Risk‐status (e.g., teenage mothers, homeless youth, youth in foster care, and youth of alcoholic parents) did not moderate the relation between presence and quality of natural mentoring relationships and youth outcomes, which may indicate that natural mentors are generally beneficial for all youth regardless of risk‐status. Implications for theory and practice concerning the quality of the natural mentoring relationship are discussed.     

Career calling and team member proactivity: The roles of living out a calling and mentoring

With the growing interest in the joint effects of individual and contextual factors in predicting team member proactivity, this paper examines why and when pursuing one's career calling can lead to team member proactivity. Drawing on the Work as a Calling Theory, we propose that “living out a calling” explains why employees' perceived career calling positively relates to team member proactivity and especially when the employee receives high levels of mentoring support. Our hypotheses are tested using a multisource and time-lagged study design with a sample of 296 dyads of Chinese employees and their direct supervisors. We found support for the mediating role of living out a calling (Time 2) in the positive relationship between perceiving a calling (Time 1) and team member proactivity (Time 3). Mentoring (Time 2) moderated the perceiving a calling and living out a calling link such that when employees received more mentoring, the relationship was positive, whereas under lower levels of mentoring, the relationship was negative. Similarly, the indirect relationship between perceiving a calling and team member proactivity through living out a calling was positive at higher levels of mentoring, but the relationship was negative at lower levels of mentoring.