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The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal

Leading Horses to Water: Male Reluctance to Participate in a Peer Mentorship Program

Michael J. Roszkowski and Teri L. Ceraso, La Salle University

Abstract

Peer mentorship has been promoted as an alternative or an adjunct to traditional mentoring. One suggested advantage of peer mentorship is that students may be more willing to participate in this type of relationship, because mentor and protégé have similar backgrounds, concerns, and statuses. Research indicates that relative to females, males are generally less willing to seek help in a variety of situations. The purpose of our study was to determine if similar sex differences exist in willingness to participate in a peer mentorship program. Compared to females, males expressed less interest in both receiving peer mentoring as well as serving as a peer mentor, although the magnitude of the sex difference was larger regarding interest in being a protégé than in being a mentor.

In the traditional mentoring model, a more experienced person, the mentor, provides guidance and support to a less experienced person, the protégé (Kram, 1983). Generally, relative to the protégé, the mentor is also older and has a higher standing in the organization (Barnett, 2008; Shore, Toyokawa, & Anderson, 2008). In higher education, the student's adviser is frequently the mentor (Campbell & Campbell, 1997; Johnson, 2007); however, whereas advising is a professional relationship, mentorship also encompasses a personal element, sometimes described as akin to friendship (e.g., Barnett, 2008, Kalbfleisch & Keyton, 1995; Young, et al, 2004). Thus, whether an adviser is also a mentor depends on the nature of the relationship between the adviser and the student (Gardiner, 1998; Johnson, 2007, 2008; Schlosser & Gelso, 2001). According to Johnson (2007), “perhaps the most consistent problem with advising relationships in higher education is the failure of many to become genuine mentorships” (p. 204).

Traditional mentoring has proven to be a valuable tool in assisting students' transition into college (Campbell & Campbell, 1997, 2007; Ferrari, 2004; Jacobi, 1991; Johnson, 2007). It has been proposed that peer mentoring can be a mechanism that serves many of the same purposes as traditional mentoring (Beal & Noel, 1980; Borden et al, 1997; Fox & Stevenson, 2006; Good, Halpin, & Halpin, 2000; Goldflam, 1999; Grant-Vallone & Ensher, 2000; Treston, 1999; Terrion & Leonard, 2007; Twomey, 1981). Although currently there are meager data on its effectiveness (Budge, 2006), peer mentoring does have certain inherent features that make it attractive and, under some circumstances, perhaps even more desirable than traditional mentoring.

To begin with, the use of students allows for a more cost-contained intervention than one using professionals (Enden, 1984). Moreover, peer mentors and protégés are of the same generation and share common experiences, so peer mentors may be better able to relate to students who are in crisis (Angelique et al., 2002). As Astin (1993) notes, “(t)he student's peer group is the single most potent source of influence on growth and development during the undergraduate years” (p. 398). Advice given by the peer mentor, therefore, may be viewed as more relevant than counsel offered by someone from a different generation. Likewise, students may be more willing to seek assistance from peers than from traditional mentors, because the relationship between mentor and protégé in a peer mentorship is on a more equal footing than in a traditional mentoring relationship, in which one party wields more authority (Barnett, 2008; Kalbfleisch & Keyton, 1995). Consequently, students may be less intimidated and more willing to seek help from other students than from administrators and faculty serving as mentors (McKavanagh, Connor, & West, 1996; Pope & van Dyke, 1999).

The purpose of this study is to compare the interest males and females expressed in receiving peer mentorship as well as serving as peer mentors. It is of interest to determine whether sex differences exist in the use of peer mentoring by college students, given that a sex difference in help-seeking behavior has been observed in numerous other contexts (Addis & Mahalik, 2003; Fischer & Farina, 1995). Generally, males have been less willing to seek help in dealing with academic difficulties (Daubman & Lehman, 1993; Ryan & Pintrich, 1997), psychological problems (Cook, 1984; Kligfield & Hoffman, 1979; Möller-Leimkühler, 2002; Padesky & Hammen, 1981), career counseling (Di Fabio & Bernaud, 2008; Rochlen, Mohr, & Hargrove, 1999), and retirement planning (Joo & Grable, 2001). Such lower rates of help seeking among males transcend racial and national lines (see Neighbors & Howard, 1987; Oliver, et al, 2005).

Men's lower treatment rates are not due to any lower incidence of problems (Oliver, et al, 2005), but rather to adherence to a social norm of traditional masculinity that frowns on help seeking (Kessler, Brown, & Broman, 1981; Lee, 1997; Möller-Leimkühler, 2002; Wisch, Mahalik, Hayes, & Nutt, 1995). Mansfield, Addis, and Courtenay (2005) have developed a scale to pinpoint more specific causes, which are reflected in the names of the subscales: (a) need for control and self-reliance, (b) minimizing problem and resignation, (c) concrete barriers and distrust of caregivers, (d) privacy, and (e) emotional control.

Method

At the end of their first semesters, first-year students attending a private Catholic university located in an urban setting completed one of two questionnaires regarding peer mentorship. The type of survey administered was dependent on whether the students had or had not taken part in a peer mentorship program at that point.

Students who had not yet received peer mentoring completed a survey about their interest in participating in such a program as either mentors or protégés. The 166 respondents to the survey consisted of 109 females and 57 males. Interest in being a protégé was gauged by responses to the following question: “If a peer mentor were available to you, would you make use of such a service?” The five answer options were: definitely not, probably not, not sure, probably yes, definitely yes. Interest in serving as a mentor was assessed by the respondent's answer to the following question: “When you are a junior or senior, how likely is it that you will want to become a peer mentor to a freshman?” Five possible answers were allowed: very unlikely, unlikely, not sure, likely, very likely.

The students who had participated as protégés in a pilot mentorship program provided an evaluation of their experiences and responded to the same question about whether they would be interested in serving as mentors when they become upperclassmen. There were 128 respondents to this questionnaire, of whom 123 (65 females and 58 males) answered the question about interest in serving as a mentor in the future.

Results and Discussion

Interest in Being a Protégé on the Part of Students Not Mentored

Among the students who were not previously mentored, males were more reluctant to be mentored by peers. For females, the percentage interested in becoming protégés was 4.6 percent definitely not, 20.2 percent probably not, 25.7 percent not sure, 45.0 percent probably yes, and 4.6 percent definitely yes. The respective percentages for males were 8.8 percent, 38.6 percent, 28.1 percent, 21.1 percent, and 3.5 percent. The two (sex) by five (interest) crosstabulation, analyzed by means of a Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel row mean scores statistic, showed that these differences were significant, Qs(1) = 10.01, p = .0016. Consolidating across the two degrees of “yes” responses reveals that approximately half of the females but only about a quarter of the males expressed some interest in being protégés in peer mentorships.

Interest in Serving as a Mentor on the Part of Students Not Mentored

On the same survey, the answers to the question about how likely students would serve as mentors in the future showed a similar but somewhat smaller sex difference. For women, the distribution was 11.9 percent very unlikely, 16.5 percent unlikely, 30.3 percent unsure, 33.0 percent likely, and 8.3 percent very likely. Among the men, the answers were 21.1 percent very unlikely, 21.1 percent unlikely, 28.1 percent unsure, 29.8 percent likely, and 0.0 percent very likely. The sex difference was again statistically significant, Qs(1) = 5.11, p = 0.0238. Whereas more than four in ten women indicated some willingness to mentor, that was true of fewer than three out of ten men.

Interest in Serving as a Mentor on the Part of Students Who Had Been Mentored

Likewise, a sex difference was observed in students reporting that they had been protégés in the past and also would likely serve as mentors in the future. The percentages of females and males, respectively, choosing each of the five options were: 12.3 versus 25.9 very unlikely, 10.8 versus 27.6 unlikely, 50.8 versus 22.4 uncertain, 21.5 versus 12.1 likely, and 4.6 versus 12.1 very likely. In other words, most males who had been mentored before indicated an unwillingness to serve as mentors, whereas most females who had been mentored previously were uncertain about their intentions. The crosstabulation almost reached the conventional level of statistical significance on the basis of the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel row mean score test, Qs(1) = 3.27, p = 0.0578.

Conclusion

Relative to females, male students are reluctant to become involved in a mentorship program as either protégés or mentors, but particularly the former. Whatever benefits peer mentorship may offer, the elimination of the often-observed sex difference in help seeking does not appear to be one of them. Lee (1997) contends, “help-seeking behaviors are proactive” (p. 337). Unfortunately, males appear to be reluctant to avail themselves of services even when the helper is a peer rather than some authority figure. With males, it may be prudent to institute an “intrusive” form of peer mentoring (Redmond, 1990), in which the mentor takes the lead and contacts the student on a periodic basis rather than waiting for the student to initiate such communication. Perhaps under such circumstances, horses can be led to water and shown why it is beneficial to drink.

Limitations of the Study

The chief limitation of this study is that it asks about intent rather than examines actual rates of participation. The generalizability of the results is unknown, since the study was conducted on a sample from one institution, and the study needs to be replicated. Also, perhaps in the end, the perceptions of first-year students are not the realities of upperclassmen. As our peer mentorship program evolves, we have observed some interesting though seemingly contradictory phenomena, which may point to the fact that college students really do develop in many ways as they progress through their college years. These observations include the following:

The two students who spearheaded our peer mentorship program were males, one a senior and the other a junior.
The two students who continue to direct the program's efforts are also males, a senior and a junior.
During a recent recruitment effort for new peer mentors, half of those who signed on for the job were males, even though in the population of students, the number of females exceeds the number of males.

However encouraging they may be, these informal observations only point to changes in willingness to serve as mentors, not protégés. It is the latter that appears to be the bigger problem. As our results show, when it comes to peer mentorship, males are apt to follow the adage that it is better to give than to receive.

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Additional Resources

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About the Authors

Michael J. Roszkowski is director of institutional research at La Salle University, and Teri L. Ceraso is director of learning support services at La Salle University. They can be reached at roszkows@lasalle.edu.