Creating a Quality Youth Mentoring Relationship: The Perspectives of College Student Mentors

Youth mentoring in the school setting is a fairly new context for youth mentoring programs to occur; therefore, more research is needed in this context to determine how to make this program type most effective. This qualitative study was designed to explore what mentors’ define as quality within youth mentoring relationships in order to determine what factors promote the formation of a bond between the mentor-mentee pair. During in-depth interviews mentors identified four factors they considered to be components of bond building: (1) consistency; (2) a community-based component (i.e. meeting outside of school); (3) spending more time together; and (4) listening. The main overarching goal of this study was to advance the mentoring literature so that it can be used to improve current programs and help enhance the creation of new, more effective programs.