Mentoring Barriers, Expected Outcomes, and Practices in Scientific Communication: Scale Development and Validation

Abstract

Developing new scales to measure aspects of mentoring, including guidance in scientific communication (SciComm), is important to enhance success among trainees pursuing research careers in science and medicine. This study examined the psychometric properties of three new measures, based on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), as mentors address skills in scientific writing, oral presentation, and impromptu speaking. Faculty research mentors ( N = 194) completed online questionnaires assessing perceptions of mentoring barriers in SciComm, outcome expectations, and practice behaviors in research and SciComm. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses rendered support for a three-factor measure of barriers, one-factor measure of expected outcomes, and a five-factor measure of practices. Good support was also found for a path model that included the variables in the prediction of mentoring practices. Findings support applying SCCT to mentoring and clarify contextual barriers–choice outcome relations which can inform barrier-coping, SciComm interventions among mentors.

Identifying Effective Mentors in Scientific Communication: A Latent Profile Analysis of Mentor Beliefs

“…Barriers to mentoring in SciComm. Perceived barriers to mentoring trainees in SciComm were measured with a 22-item scale assessing trainee, institutional, and mentor-self barriers (Anderson et al, 2020). Trainee barriers (9 items) represent contextual influences that SCCT proposes relate to choice actions directly or indirectly through self-efficacy, that is, trainee issues that make it difficult for mentors to help trainees with SciComm tasks (e.g., trainee weakness in basic English writing skills, insufficient effort, dread of negative feedback or criticism).…”

“…This scale measures positive outcomes (6 items; e.g., "My own productivity is increased by mentoring") and negative outcomes (7 items; e.g., "Mentoring takes valuable time away from my own tasks") on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Anderson et al (2020) reported Cronbach's a reliabilities of .69 for positive and .81 for negative expected outcomes from mentoring. Only 2 positive and 3 negative items were measured in both Sample 1 and Sample 2, so 5 expected outcomes items were included in the combined analysis.…”

“…Mentoring practices in research and SciComm. Mentor perceptions of their mentoring practices were measured with a 21-item scale assessing mentoring in general research and the three modes of SciComm (Anderson et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2018). The five-factor scale measured (1) research technical-career mentoring related to research skill, productivity, and networking (5 items), for example, "Introduce my trainees to important people in the field"; (2) research psychosocial mentoring related to personal coping (4 items), for example, "Foster strategies for developing resilience, e.g.…”

“…Our recent qualitative studies of faculty describing their own mentoring experiences have led to development of new measures focused on SciComm. These allow more comprehensive analysis of the mentoring received by trainees destined for research careers (Anderson et al, 2020;Cameron et al, 2013;Lee et al, 2018). By applying a person-centered approach to analysis of mentor belief profiles, we can now go beyond the typical variable-centered research on mentor differences to compare mentoring practices across groups of mentors with different profiles, identified by their personal beliefs on a variety of issues relevant to their mentoring role, including their beliefs about SciComm.…”

Mentoría en programas graduados de psicología en Puerto Rico

“…Se han identificado tres tipos principales de barreras a la mentoría que surgen de las personas mentoras, las que reciben mentoría y de las instituciones (Anderson, 2021;Serrano-García, 2015;Veeramah, 2012). Para las personas mentoras, las barreras principales son: (a) desconocimiento de la tarea y sus beneficios, (b) características de personalidad y valores incompatibles con las funciones y (c) dificultades para evaluar el resultado de la relación.…”