Validating an Institutional Mentoring Climate Survey at a Health Sciences Center

The institutional mentoring climate influences the success of mentoring programs. There currently exists no validated survey to assess this climate - a critical gap in this field.

To establish and validate a survey to assess the institutional climate for mentoring at a Health Sciences Center.

We created a survey with the following four dimensions - mentoring structure (with 13 items); mentoring programs/activities (with 11 items); and mentoring policies/guidelines (with nine items), followed by an overall value dimension (with four items). Four experts evaluated this survey for content validity. These experts rated each program item, on a score of one to four, on whether the item related to the overall conceptual framework and to the dimension in which it was placed in the survey.

The mean scores for individual items as they related to the overall conceptual framework ranged from 3.25 to 4.0. On the other hand, the mean scores for items as they related to individual dimensions were lower. Items with lower score were associated with the following - a question simultaneously asked about multiple things, the possibility that faculty respondent might be unfamiliar with leader's role outlined in the question, and binary structure or lack of clarity of the question. All 37 items were retained, with modifications as necessary.

We established the content validity of our survey. The next step will be to establish its construct validity. Having a valid and reliable scale will help support and evaluate interventions for improving institutional mentoring climate at academic centers.