A descriptive and comparative analysis of peer advisor psychosocial development

The purpose of this study was to examine advancement toward three tasks of psychosocial development for a national group of academic peer advisors. Previous research and program evaluations have shown the positive impact serving as a peer advisor has on undergraduate students, in addition to the institutional and advisee benefits generated. In this review of the literature, no national studies were found to demonstrate the broader impact of the peer advising experience on peer advisors. This study illustrated the psychosocial impact through the Student Developmental Task and Lifestyle Assessment (SDTLA), which utilized three developmental tasks of Establishing and Clarifying Purpose; Developing Autonomy; and Mature Interpersonal Relationships (Winston, Miller, & Cooper, 1999b). Four research questions were employed to portray peer advisor psychosocial development levels across three tasks. The first three research questions examined peer advisor results by gender, class standing, race/ethnicity, international student status, and number of terms served as a peer advisor. The fourth research question compared peer advisor levels of achievement to a normed, national sample of college students. Results indicated that males, sophomores, and international student peer advisors experienced the greatest gains from serving as a peer advisor and that there was an interaction between class standing and number of terms served. Additionally, peer advisor participants scored higher in all tasks, with the majority of groups scoring at least one standard deviation higher than the normed college student population. Peer advisors demonstrated the most progress in the Establishing and Clarifying Purpose and Mature Interpersonal Relationships tasks. Implications for peer advising program administrators were reviewed and recommendations for future research were discussed, specifying suggestions for other methodological approaches and the conceptualization of race/ethnicity and gender in psychosocial development research