Duration of Mentoring Relationship Predicts Child Well-Being: Evidence from a Danish Community-Based Mentoring Program.

Anna Piil Damm,Freja Kerrn-Jespersen,Sarah Van Mastrigt,Emma Von Essen,Astrid Jæger Jensen

doi:10.3390/ijerph19052906

Abstract

While a substantial body of literature suggests that lasting community mentoring relationships can have a range of positive effects on youths, little is known about these effects in the Nordic welfare context, where community mentees may have lower risk profiles compared to many previous samples. This study explores how the duration (length) of child mentoring relationships predicts parental perceptions of child well-being among 197 children served by Denmark’s most extensive community-based youth mentoring program. We find that children who have had a mentor for at least one year are perceived to have significantly higher well-being. In contrast, we find no significant differences in well-being between children who had mentors for less than one year and children on a waiting list. Previous research, conducted in primarily North American contexts, finds that longer mentoring relationships substantially improve school behavior and reduce risk taking. Our results add to the literature by indicating that a minimum mentoring relationship duration of one year appears to be similarly important in promoting well-being for youths involved in community-based mentoring programs in a Nordic welfare context.

Highlights

Mentoring initiatives have been shown to have multifaceted and broad impacts on youths, including improved social and academic achievement, reduced problem behavior, and improved psychological and physical well-being [1–10].Youth mentoring programs have traditionally sought to improve the lives of children and youth by providing a relationship with an older, more experienced adult who is a good role model
Given that demographic and socioeconomic background characteristics are likely to correlate statistically with child well-being as well as with match duration, we report all results controlling for child gender and age, as well as parental socioeconomic background and demographic characteristics
The results of our regression analysis are in line with previous literature on communitybased youth mentoring programs in the North American context, e.g., [10,12,13,15], and support our first hypothesis that longer lasting friendships are beneficial to child well-being

Summary

Introduction

Mentoring initiatives have been shown to have multifaceted and broad impacts on youths, including improved social and academic achievement, reduced problem behavior, and improved psychological and physical well-being [1–10]. Youth mentoring programs have traditionally sought to improve the lives of children and youth by providing a relationship with an older, more experienced adult who is a good role model. In investigations of the effects of a youth mentor, it is key to distinguish between effects achieved in the context of shorter versus longer relationships. Qualitative studies suggested that the mentoring relationship needs to last for at least six months to have an effect [14]. Across various forms of youth mentoring, quantitative studies have further confirmed that longer, compared to shorter, relationships seem to be associated with a higher positive impact on youth academic, social and psychological outcomes [1,3,4,13,15–17]

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