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Factors associated with successful mentor matching in an intervention study of youth violence
Author(s) -
Len Tyler,
Cheng Tina,
Lindstrom Johnson Sarah,
Jones Vanya,
Fein Joel,
Manning Ryan Leticia
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/jcop.22503
Subject(s) - seriousness , intervention (counseling) , psychological intervention , matching (statistics) , medicine , demographics , psychology , randomized controlled trial , clinical psychology , nursing , demography , surgery , pathology , sociology , political science , law
One challenge of conducting intervention studies is ensuring that study participants are exposed to the intervention. For example, in our randomized controlled trial of Take Charge! , a mentor‐implemented and research‐informed violence prevention program that partners with one‐on‐one community‐based mentoring agencies, only 50% of intervention youth with fight‐related injuries were successfully matched with a mentor. We examined the differences between matched ( n = 49) and unmatched ( n = 49) youth with regard to demographics, time from injury to study enrollment, perceived seriousness of injury, belief that future injury can be avoided, and household chaos. Youth who were successfully matched with a mentor were more likely to perceive the injury as very serious or somewhat serious compared with unmatched youth (95.9% vs. 79.6%, p = .028). All other factors were not significantly associated with successful mentor matching. Future violence prevention interventions should consider youth perceptions as a factor that may influence the completion of desired interventions.