Department of Psychological Sciences, William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA.
Am J Community Psychol. 2020 Jun;65(3-4):455-466. doi: 10.1002/ajcp.12412. Epub 2019 Dec 20.
Over the past two decades, youth mentoring programs have increased in popularity as an intervention for children exposed to a range of stressful life circumstances. Such programs have been shown to promote positive youth development and reduce risk for emotional and behavioral problems; yet, the effect size of youth gains remains small. The current study examined the influence of college student mentors' history of early life stress and baseline depressive symptoms on their effectiveness in youth mentoring relationships using 340 randomized mentor-youth pairs from College Mentors for Kids, a well-established mentoring program with chapters across the United States. Hierarchical linear models revealed that mentors with higher levels of depressive symptoms reported lower relationship satisfaction and increased avoidance in the mentoring relationship. In contrast, mentors who experienced higher levels of early life stress had youth who reported greater satisfaction in the mentoring relationship and decreased relational anxiety. These findings are some of the first to examine the impact of mentor characteristics on mentor-youth relationships and highlight the importance of considering factors relevant to psychosocial functioning and emotional distress when recruiting, training, and supporting college student mentors.
在过去的二十年中，青年导师计划作为一种针对经历各种压力生活环境的儿童的干预措施，越来越受欢迎。这些计划已被证明可以促进青少年的积极发展并降低情绪和行为问题的风险；然而，青少年收益的效果仍然很小。本研究使用来自“大学生导师为孩子”的 340 对随机导师-青年配对，检查了大学生导师的早期生活压力和基线抑郁症状史对其在青年导师关系中的有效性的影响，“大学生导师为孩子”是一个成熟的辅导项目，在美国各地都有分会。分层线性模型显示，抑郁症状较高的导师报告说，导师关系的满意度较低，回避感增加。相比之下，经历较高水平早期生活压力的导师的青年报告说，导师关系的满意度更高，关系焦虑感降低。这些发现是首批研究导师特征对导师-青年关系影响的发现之一，并强调了在招募、培训和支持大学生导师时，考虑与心理社会功能和情绪困扰相关因素的重要性。
