School-Based Mentoring Study
To rigorously address the question of whether School-Based Mentoring can improve the lives of youth, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) and Public/Private Ventures (P/PV) partnered to undertake a two-part evaluation of the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) SBM program. The first study was conducted by BBBSA and examined how these programs are implemented. The second study, summarized below, is a national, random assignment impact evaluation conducted by P/PV.

Methodology
For this study, youth were randomly assigned to participate in the BBBS SBM program or to a control group for the 15-month study period. This strategy allowed P/PV to confidently attribute any differences detected between Littles and their non-mentored peers to their involvement in the BBBS SBM program. The study period included all of the 2004/2005 school year and the first half of the 2005/2006 school year.  A total of 1,139 youth participated in the study, of which 565 were assigned to receive a school-based mentor.

Year One Impacts
The study found that, relative to their non-mentored peers, Littles showed improvements in the following teacher-reported outcomes:

• Overall academic performance, specifically in:
  • Science, and
  • Written and oral language
• Quality of assignments turned in,
• Number of assignments turned in (homework and in-class assignments), and
• Serious school infractions (including principal’s office visits, fighting and suspensions).

They also improved in the following youth-reported outcomes:

• Scholastic efficacy (feeling more competent academically), and
• Skipping school, which teachers confirmed by reporting that fewer Littles had an unexcused absence in the four weeks prior to the survey.

Littles were also significantly more likely than their non-mentored peers to report an important additional benefit:

• The presence of an adult in their life who provided them with the types of supports BBBS strives to provide participants—someone they look up to and talk to about personal problems, who encourages them to do their best, cares about what happens to them and influences the choices they make.

Year Two Impacts
Only 52% of the mentored youth had a mentor during the first half of the second school year (a significant number of youth moved to a different school district or transitioned to a middle or high school where there wasn’t a mentoring program).  Additionally, only 18 percent of Littles met with a mentor for all three school semesters. Therefore, though almost half of the youth in the treatment group weren’t receiving mentoring, the Year Two Impacts are an observation of a combination of factors, the first-year effects (minus any possible decay in those effects since the end of the school year) plus the impacts of any additional mentoring received by about half the Littles who had a mentor the first part of the second school year. Thus, the difference between the outcomes of the full group of Littles and those of their peers is likely to underestimate the impact of participating in an SBM program for more than one school year.

Because of these factors as of the middle of the second school year, most of the impacts that were present at the end of the first school year were not sustained.  There were, however, still some positive outcomes.  Youth in the treatment group compared to those in the control group were more likely to report the presence of an important adult in their life and were:

•          Less likely to initiate skipping school
•          More likely to feel they would attend and finish college

Program Quality Findings
The above findings represent all youth and all programs. However, P/PV also found that some program practices can influence impacts.  The following is a list of program practices that appear to affect impacts, (though since the rigor of a random assignment design is no longer intact when examining program practices, these findings need to be interpreted with caution.)

The following practices were related to relationship quality, continuation to the following school year, and/or match length:

Match Length—Longer lasting matches had greater impacts than those matched for less time.

Relationship Quality—The strength of the relationship between Bigs and Littles was related to the level and number of impacts.  In general, youth in higher quality relationships had greater and stronger impacts and youth in weaker quality relationships had limited impacts--in one case (youth in weaker quality relationships whose relationship ended in year one), showed negative impacts. However, this could be due to the type of youth who are able to form close relationships with adults and not the quality of the mentoring relationship.

Volunteer Training—Matches that received training reported stronger relationships and were more likely to continue their match from school year one to school year two.

Match Support—Volunteers who were satisfied with the match support they received were more positive about their match relationship and were more likely to continue their match to the following school year.

Summer Contact—Matches that kept in contact during the summer were of higher quality and were more likely to continue to the following school year.

Download the entire study>>

Community-Based Mentoring Study
During 1992 and 1993, Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia-based national research organization, looked at 959 boys and girls, ages 10 to 16, through Big Brothers Big Sisters agencies in Phoenix, Ariz.; Wichita, Kan.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Rochester, N.Y.; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia, Penn.; and Houston and San Antonio, Texas. The agencies were selected for their large size and geographic diversity. Of the young people taking part in the study, more than 60 percent were boys, and more than 50 percent were minorities. Most came from low-income households, and many lived in families with histories of substance abuse and/or domestic violence.

Approximately one-half of the children were matched with a Big Brother or Big Sister. The others were assigned to a waiting list (control group). The children were randomly assigned to one group or the other. The matched children met with their Big Brothers or Big Sisters about three times a month for an average of one year.

Researchers interviewed the Littles, the children who were not matched, and their parents on two occasions: when they first applied for a Big Brother or Big Sister, and again 18 months later.

The Results
Researchers found that after 18 months of spending time with their Bigs, the Little Brothers and Little Sisters were:

• less likely to begin using illegal drugs
• less likely to begin using alcohol
• less likely to skip school
• less likely to skip a class
• more confident of their performance in schoolwork
• less likely to hit someone
• getting along better with their families

Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteers had the greatest impact in the area of alcohol and substance abuse prevention. For every 100 youth between ages 10 and 16 who start using drugs, the study found, only 54 similar youth who are matched with a Big will start using drugs. Minority boys and girls were the most strongly influenced; they were 70 percent less likely than their peers to initiate drug use.

The Impact
The research found that Big Brothers Big Sisters offers a positive, broad-based program “that focuses less on specific problems after they occur, and more on meeting youths’ most basic developmental needs.”

The matches that were observed in the study shared everyday activities: eating out, playing sports or attending sports events, going to movies, sightseeing, doing chores, and just hanging out together.

What mattered to the children was not the activities, but the fact that they had a caring adult in their lives. Because they had someone to confide in and to look up to, they were, in turn, doing better in school and at home. The Littles were also avoiding violence and substance abuse at a pivotal time in their lives when even small changes in behavior, or choices made, can change the course of their future.

Download the full study>>

Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters (1995) was the culmination of a four-part series on Big Brothers Big Sisters. The first three reports were A Study of Program Practices (1993); A Study of Volunteer Recruitment and Screening (1994); and Building Relationships with Youth in Program Settings (1995).

Public/Private Ventures, a national research organization with more than 20 years of experience in studying child development and social service issues, conducted the independent research.

The study was funded by a $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, the Commonwealth Fund, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and an anonymous donor.