Validating an Institutional Mentoring Climate Survey at a Health Sciences Center

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Organizational Psychology
• Academic Medicine

Background:

• The success of institutional mentoring programs is significantly impacted by the mentoring climate.
• A validated survey to assess this climate is currently lacking, representing a critical gap in the field.
• Academic health centers require tools to evaluate and enhance their mentoring initiatives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a survey instrument for assessing the institutional climate for mentoring.
• To provide a reliable tool for evaluating mentoring environments within Health Sciences Centers.

Main Methods:

• A survey was constructed with four dimensions: mentoring structure (13 items), mentoring programs/activities (11 items), mentoring policies/guidelines (9 items), and overall value (4 items).
• Content validity was assessed by four experts who rated each item's relevance to the conceptual framework and its assigned dimension.
• Item relevance scores ranged from 3.25 to 4.0 for the overall framework and were lower for individual dimensions.

Main Results:

• All 37 survey items were retained after expert review and necessary modifications.
• Lower item scores were linked to questions that were ambiguous, asked multiple things, or assumed familiarity with specific roles.
• The survey demonstrated content validity, with expert ratings indicating relevance to the mentoring climate framework.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully established the content validity of a new survey for assessing the institutional mentoring climate.
• Future research will focus on establishing the survey's construct validity.
• A validated and reliable survey will be instrumental in supporting and evaluating interventions aimed at improving institutional mentoring climates in academic settings.