| Summary: | <p> Youth-initiated mentoring that focuses on a mentee’s academic goals has the potential to positively influence academic, social-emotional, and identity development in older adolescents while building enduring mentor-mentee relationships (DuBois et al., 2011, Schwartz & Rhodes, 2016; Bayer, Grossman, & DuBois, 2015; Karcher & Nakkula, 2010). While the majority of youth mentoring research has focused on long-term (12 months or more) resiliency-based mentoring models, new emerging models like youth-initiated and academic instrumental mentoring need to be investigated (Rhodes, 2002; DuBois et al., 2002; Schwartz & Rhodes, 2016). The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the influences of short-term youth-initiated mentoring on higher order cognitive skill development and mentor-mentee relationship quality. Participants included 145 high school students enrolled in an International private school’s youth-initiated academic mentoring program who completed a digital survey twice over three months. The survey instrument included a descriptive section that collected participants’ demographic information while quantifying their youth mentoring experience, a Mentor-Youth Alliance Survey that assessed mentor-mentee relationship quality (Zand, Thomson, Cervantes, Espiritu, Klagholz, et al., 2009) and two measurement tools that assessed higher order cognitive skills including the Developmental Assets Profile internal assets (Scales, Benson, & Mannes, 2006) and the future expectations the Survey of Academic Youth Outcomes Youth Survey future expectations (NOIST, 2013). Findings indicated that short-term youth-initiated academic mentoring positively influenced high order cognitive development in older adolescent students. In addition, youth-initiated mentoring may promote higher quality mentor-mentee relationships within 3 to 12 months.</p><p>
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