Mentoring in higher education: does it enhance mentees’ research productivity?

Abstract

Mentoring programs are increasingly widespread in academia. Still, comparatively little is known about their effects. With the help of a self-collected dataset of 368 researchers in two different fields and accounting for self-selection via matching techniques, we find mentees in formal mentoring programs to be more productive than comparable researchers who do not participate in a formal program -irrespective of whether these instead have an informal mentor or not. Informal mentoring relationships, to the contrary, do not positively affect mentees' research productivity.

Non-tenured post-doctoral researchers’ job mobility and research output: An analysis of the role of research discipline, department size, and coauthors

“…Determinants considered include age (see Goodwin and Sauer, 1995;Rauber and Ursprung, 2008), gender (see Davis and Patterson, 2001;Fabel et al, 2008), nationality (Mamiseishvili and Rosser, 2010); field of study (see Davis and Patterson, 2001), coauthorships (see Davis and Patterson, 2001;Hollis, 2001), conference attendance (see Prpić, 2000;, participation in PhD programs (see Austin, 2002;Bowen and Ruenstine, 1992;Sadowski et al, 2010;Schneider, 2010), participation in mentoring programs (see Gardiner et al, 2007;Muschallik and Pull, 2015), affiliation with research centers (Sabharwal and Hu, 2013), reputation and quality of department or university (see Allison and Long, 1990;Bedeian et al, 2010;Crane, 1965Crane, , 1970Long, 1978;Long and McGinnis, 1981;Long et al, 1998), department size (see Fabel et al, 2008;Golden and Carstensen, 1992;Turner and Mairesse, 2003), publication output of academic advisor (see Hilmer and Hilmer, 2007;Reskin, 1979;Williamson and Cable, 2003), and teaching load and service tasks (see Taylor et al, 2006). Some papers study the effect of mobility across countries on research productivity (e.g.…”

Establishing online mentorship for early career researchers: Lessons from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping International Mentoring Programme

“…In the past, evaluation strategies have looked at both “objective” and “subjective” outcomes for mentees (and, to some extent, for mentors). Objective outcomes included numbers of research publications or grants produced (van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, ; Gardiner et al., ; Mundt, ; Muschallik & Pull, ). Subjective measures included self‐reported changes in mentees’ work patterns, or feelings of being supported or satisfied with their career progress (van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, ; Ehrich et al., ; Gardiner et al., ; Mundt, ).…”

“…Expertise can be purely academic, foucsed on work-life balance, personal branding and networking, or a general career advice. Mentoring has been shown to be beneficial to mentees, both in terms of objective research productivity (van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, 2000;Gardiner, Tiggemann, Kearns, & Marshall, 2007;Mundt, 2001;Muschallik & Pull, 2016) and subjective outcomes (e.g. self-perception as an academic, Gardiner et al, 2007;Ehrich, Hansford, & Tennent, 2004;Mundt, 2001;van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, 2000).…”

“…This phenomenon has led to the popularization of online mentoring programmes (Ensher, Heun, & Blanchard, 2003). Regardless of whether a mentoring programme is in-person or online, its success relies on its design (Long, 1997) and regular evaluations (Ehrich et al, 2004;Muschallik & Pull, 2016). In this editorial, we introduce the history and architecture of one such successful online mentoring programme: the International Online Mentoring Programme organized by the Student and Postdoc Special Interest Group (SP-SIG, https://www.ohbmtrainees.com/mentoring-programme/, www.ohbmtrainees.com) of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM, www.humanbrainmapping.org).…”

“…Objective outcomes included numbers of research publications or grants produced (van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, 2000;Gardiner et al, 2007;Mundt, 2001;Muschallik & Pull, 2016). Subjective measures included self-reported changes in mentees' work patterns, or feelings of being supported or satisfied with their career progress (van Eck Peluchette & Jeanquart, 2000;Ehrich et al, 2004;Gardiner et al, 2007;Mundt, 2001).…”