Mentoring up: How mentorship training influences mentee intent to change behavior

Area of Science:

• Mentoring and professional development
• Research training evaluation

Background:

• The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research developed the Mentoring Up curriculum.
• Effective mentorship is crucial for research progress and trainee development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate diverse implementations of the Mentoring Up curriculum.
• To examine the link between self-reported mentoring competence changes and intended post-training behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of data from 401 respondents across 59 training events (2015-2022).
• Utilized the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) for pre- and post-training evaluation.
• Quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey responses.

Main Results:

• Intent to change, perceived training value, modality, and prior training significantly correlated with MCA score changes.
• Face-to-face training yielded higher perceived value than online modalities.
• Participants reporting greater competence gains discussed core curriculum principles in their behavior plans.

Conclusions:

• Participation in the Mentoring Up curriculum enhances mentoring competence.
• The observed competence improvement is practically and significantly associated with participants' intent to modify mentoring behaviors.