For Programs - Research & Statistics

MENTOR's Research Corner: A large body of research exists on mentoring. Much of this work contains a multitude of applications that could greatly benefit the mentoring community. Through the Research Corner, we intend to share this wealth of information by summarizing and extracting its practical benefits. MENTOR’s Research Corner summarizes a broad range of important reliable research.

Strategies For Recruiting And Retaining Volunteers
Fostering Positive Outcomes
Mentoring Immigrant Youth
Spanning the Gender Gap in Mentoring
The Critical Ingredient in Afterschool Programs
Mentoring Children of Prisoners
Group Mentoring
Keeping Matches Together
Mentoring and Race
Benefits from Mentoring
Gauging the Effectiveness of Youth Mentoring

The Study of Mentoring in the Learning Environment (SMILE): A randomized study of the effectiveness of school-based mentoring.  The effect of providing youth school-based mentoring (SBM), in addition to other school-based support services, was examined with a sample of 516 predominately Latino students across schools.  

Public/Private Ventures (P/PV): A national leader in creating and strengthening programs that improve lives in low-income communities.  “Too much time and money are spent on ineffective approaches, while many models proven to work don't get the support they deserve”.  Over the past 20 years, P/PV has produced a number of the seminal studies in mentoring.

Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters. Weekly meetings with a mentor for (on average) a year had reduced first-time drug use by almost half and first-time alcohol use by a third, had cut school absenteeism by half, improved parental and peer relationships, and gave the youth confidence in doing their school work. (Re-issue of 1995 Study)

Making a Difference in Schools: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study. Serving almost 870,000 youth nationwide, school-based mentoring is one of the fastest growing forms of mentoring in the US today. Making a Difference in Schools presents findings from a landmark random assignment impact study of Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring—the first national study of this program model. This executive summary highlights nine key findings from the full report and outlines several recommendations for policy and practice.

High School Mentors In Brief: Findings from the Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study. The brief presents an overview of the findings, which suggest that high school volunteers bring inherent strengths to their role as mentors but also present notable challenges for programs; implications for policy and practice are also explored.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study:Bridging the gap between children trauma and negative consequences later in life. The ACE Study is an ongoing collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente.  Led by Co-principal Investigators Robert F. Anda, MD, MS, and Vincent J. Felitti, MD, the ACE Study is perhaps the largest scientific research study of its kind, analyzing the relationship between multiple categories of childhood trauma (ACEs), and health and behavioral outcomes later in life.

Summer, 2007 - ACEs and Smoking:  Lives Gone Up in Smoke
Spring, 2007 - ACEs and Stress:  Paying the Piper
Winter, 2006 - ACEs and Depression
Summer, 2003 - ACEs and Alcoholism
Spring, 2003 - Origins and Essence of the ACE Study