A new Mentor Evaluation Tool: Evidence of validity

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Faculty Development
• Mentorship Research

Background:

• Mentorship is crucial for junior faculty success in academic health sciences.
• Existing evaluation tools have limitations, focusing on specific mentor/mentee types.
• There is a need for a comprehensive tool to assess one-on-one faculty mentoring effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a Mentor Evaluation Tool (MET).
• To assess the effectiveness of one-on-one mentoring for faculty in academic health sciences.
• To provide validity evidence for the MET across different domains.

Main Methods:

• Collected evidence for content, internal structure, and relationship to other variables.
• Administered the 13-item MET to 185 junior faculty across four health science schools.
• Evaluated the MET with mentees of faculty from three distinct groups (award winners, training program graduates, and control).

Main Results:

• The 13 MET items aligned with established mentoring domains and competencies.
• High reliability was found (Cronbach's alpha = 0.96).
• Confirmatory factor analysis supported a single-factor structure, and mentor groups did not significantly differ on MET scores.

Conclusions:

• The MET provides validity evidence for evaluating mentors in academic health sciences.
• The tool did not distinguish between outstanding and typical mentors.
• Further validation with mentor-mentee pairs and longitudinal studies is recommended.