Development and Content Validity Testing of the Mentor Behavioral Interaction Rubric.

Many mentor training interventions in higher education focus on improving interactions between mentors and mentees. Existing measures of interactions are based on reported perceptions of the mentor or mentee. However, there are currently no objective assessments of the mentor's behavioral skill. The purpose of this study was to develop a Mentor Behavioral Interaction (MBI) Rubric as a measure of a mentor's behavioral skill during single-episode interactions with a mentee. Subsequently, the content validity was assessed. The six items (Part 1), evaluated by five mentoring experts as quantifiable behaviors in any mentor-mentee interaction, were based on the Mentoring Competency Assessment (Fleming et al., 2013). The experts developed scoring criteria (highest, middle, and lowest performance) for each item, and created another eleven items (Part 2) to characterize the content (yes/no) of the interaction. Seven content experts rated the items and scoring criteria using a scale ranging from very (4) to not relevant (1) (Lynn, 1986). Five of the six Part 1 items and scoring criteria, and nine of the eleven Part 2 items had item content validity indices (I-CVI) ≥ 0.86. The Part 1 "motivates" item and scoring, and the Part 2 "personal/professional preferences" item were revised based on expert recommendations. One Part 2 item was deleted. Average scale content validity indices (S-CVI/Ave) were ≥ 0.90. The MBI Rubric is the first measure developed to assess single episodes of videoed mentor-mentee interactions. The Rubric may be used with other measures to assess the effectiveness of mentor training. Limitations include: evaluation of the mentor's behavior without accounting for the mentee's behavior; inability to infer cognitive processes; and focus on the quality of one interaction, rather than the effectiveness of the relationship over time. Future work will assess inter-rater reliability, sensitivity to change, and construct validity for the Rubric.