Mentoring: Self Perceptions

Sometimes mentoring relationships improve children’s self-perception and sometimes they do not.  Overall, it is not clear whether self-esteem is a viable target for mentoring programs.

Tierney and colleagues do not find that participants in the BB/BS program have levels of self-esteem that are significantly different than similar youth who remained on a waiting list for a mentor.^BBS1  However, subsequent studies of the BB/BS program suggest that mentoring indirectly improves children’s self-esteem by improving parent-child relationships.^BBS3   

Students participating in the Across Ages program (including its mentoring component) have better outcomes on some measures of self-perception.  Their scores on a standardized assessment of well-being are slightly but significantly higher than the scores of a control group. ^AA1 They also had a greater sense of self-control.^AA2   However, they did not have significantly better scores on a more specific measure of self-perception.^AA1   

Time may determine whether mentoring relationships affect self-esteem. Mentoring relationships that last 12 months or longer are associated with significant improvements in adolescents’ self-worth, whereas those of shorter duration tend to have mild or even negative effects on this outcome (Grossman and Rhodes (1999), as summarized in BBS3).