Mentor personality and attachment as correlates of youth mentoring relationship quality within a school-based mentoring intervention: The moderating role of negative interactions.

Abstract

Mentor relationship quality is considered a mechanism linking youth mentoring to positive developmental outcomes. It is important to understand the factors that promote high-quality youth mentoring relationships. The current investigation examined whether certain mentor characteristics were associated with youth mentoring relationship quality. Children (n = 55) were participating in an efficacy trial of a lunchtime mentoring program for aggressive children. Children received two different mentors over the course of an academic year, resulting in 104 unique mentoring dyads. Analyses examined the unique and interactive influence of mentor personality, attachment style, and negative interactions within the mentoring relationship on mentoring relationship quality. For both child- and mentor-reported relationship quality, negative interactions moderated the association between some dimensions of mentor personality and relationship quality. Understanding the influence of mentor personality and attachment tendencies on mentoring relationships requires an appreciation for the context of the mentoring relationship and broader goals of the mentoring intervention.