The Protective Influence of Mentoring on Adolescents' Substance Use: Direct and Indirect Pathways

A conceptual model was tested in which mentoring relationships were hypothesized to reduce substance use both directly and indirectly through improvements in adoles-cents’self-perceptions and close relationships. The study included 928 young adoles-cents (M age = 12.25), all of whom applied to Big Brothers Big Sisters programs. The adolescents were randomly assigned to either the treatment or control group and ad-ministered questions at baseline and 18 months later. The hypothesized model was not substantiated particularly well with data from the entire sample but was strongly sup-ported when it was estimated with a subgroup of youth who were in longerlasting re-lationships. Being matched for longer than 12 months had significant impacts on the frequency of substance use and on parental relationships. Consistent with our con-ceptual model, parental relationships mediated the relationship between mentoring and substance use. Implications of these findings for research and interventions are discussed. Millions of American youth are engaged in school-and community-based mentoring programs, and by all accounts the popularity of this intervention strategy will continue to grow (Rhodes, 2002). Evaluations of volunteer mentoring programs provide evidence of positive influences on adolescent behavioral out-comes, including reductions in substance use