Mentoring and mentor-like relationships between adults and adolescents may also improve the parent-child relationship. This positive change may result by virtue of the adolescent's participation in a "successful" relationship with a mentor, in which he or she can develop fundamental elements of social interaction, such as trust in others and the productive expression of emotions (Tierney, Grossman, & Resch, 1995). This phenomenon was explored by Tierney, Grossman and Resch (1995), who experimentally evaluated the effects of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters (BB/BS) program. Data were collected from 959 youth, split nearly evenly into the control and treatment groups, at the time of entry into the study, at the time the child-mentor match was made, and 18 months after entry into the study. The majority of the sample was from a minority background (55%), male (60%), and between 11 and 13 years old (69%); all of the sample was between the ages of 10 and 16. Over 25% these youth had been subject to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, and many (over 40%) were participating in public assistance programs. The researchers found that the quality of parent-child relationships, measured in changes in trust, communication, anger/alienation, was positively associated to participation in the program. Participants also reported lying to their parents less frequency than youth in the control groups (Tierney et al., 1995). Rhodes, Grossman, and Resch (2000) also found that "mentoring led to statistically significant improvements in… youth's relationships with their parents".