142 Validation of the Mentoring Competency Assessment to evaluate the mentorship skills and competencies of mentees

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: The purpose of this study was to assess if the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) could be used to capture mentee gains in mentorship skills and how the mentorship competencies may vary structurally for mentees compared to mentors, while the original MCA was shown to be a validated measure to assess mentor skills. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The mentee training survey data were collected nationally from 2015 to 2022. The survey data set included 401 respondents who consented to participate after 59 mentee training events hosted by 34 institutions/organizations who participated in face-to-face and online training as well as completed the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) in their surveys. We conducted principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation to investigate the internal structure of the MCA and Hatcher’s criteria were applied. After a team of mentoring experts independently interpreted the PCA results and reached a consensus on the interpretations of the components, factor analysis and internal consistency reliability analysis were applied to assess the construct validity and the reliability. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: There were significant component loadings of the eight components with varimax rotation and 22 of the total 26 items were loaded into components. Four items, (5) pursuing strategies to improve communication, (6) coordinating with other mentors, (11) developing strategies to meet goals, and (23) setting career goals, were excluded from the factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha analysis since these items were not significantly loaded into any components. The eight-component structure was validated (χ 2 =313.209, p<.001, RMSEA=.083, CFI=.907, TLI=.881, SRMR=.073) and the hypothesized model of the eight components resulted in an acceptable fit to the data with standardized factor loadings ranging from 0.58 to 0.93. The alpha coefficient is from 0.58 to 0.90, suggesting the items have high internal consistency. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Based upon the findings we recommend that the full revised MCA for mentees is used to capture mentees’ mentorship skill gains even if not all of the competency modules are used in the training. The development and validation of measures such as the MCA are important as we move toward the use of common measures across programs such as the CTSAs.