Mentor and protégé goal orientations as predictors of newcomer stress

Although many academic organizations offer formal mentoring programs, little is known about how individual characteristics of peer mentors and their protégés interact to reduce new-student stress. First-year college students participated in a peer-mentoring program designed to reduce stress. The results of this study demonstrated that protégés who received greater psychosocial and career support showed greater stress reduction. Additionally, protégés with a higher avoid performance goal orientation showed lesser stress reduction. Mentor avoid performance goal orientation was positively associated with stress reduction for protégés high on avoid performance goal orientation, but negatively associated for those low on avoid performance goal orientation

A Comparison Of Face-To-Face And Electronic Peer-Mentoring: Interactions With Mentor Gender

The present study compared the relative impact of peer-mentoring that took place either face-to-face or through electronic chat. Protégés were 106 college freshmen randomly assigned to a senior college student mentor and to one of the two communication modes. Fifty-one mentors interacted with one of these proteges face-to-face and one solely through electronic chat. Electronic chat resulted in less psychosocial support, career support, and post-mentoring protege self-efficacy for those with male but not female mentors. Analyses of coded transcripts revealed that males condensed their language to a greater extent than did females in the electronic chat condition relative to the face-to-face condition. Dyads in the electronic chat condition had more interactive dialogue than did those in the face-to-face condition. Finally, dialogue interactivity predicted post-mentoring self-efficacy but only for those who communicated through electronic chat. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved