Revalidation of the Mentoring Competency Assessment to evaluate skills of research mentors: The MCA-21.

Introduction: The Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA) is an example of a validated instrument for measuring mentor skills for postsecondary Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine research. The purpose of this study was to revalidate the MCA scale using a larger, more diverse population since the original MCA was validated on a small sample of predominantly senior white male faculty. Methods: The MCA was completed by 1626 mentors from a survey data set of 1759 respondents who participated in eight or more hours of face-to-face Entering Mentoring-based training between 2010 and 2019. 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: While the 26-item MCA instrument was originally validated with six subscales, through the factor and reliability analyses, all the parameter estimates for each item of seven components of 24-item MCA were significant and had relatively high internal consistency; the alpha coefficient for the components ranged from 0.77 to 0.86. Conclusions: Five items from the MCA have been dropped, leaving a condensed 21 item scale (MCA-21) which loads onto six competencies, and should now be used to effectively measure mentoring skills. We provide recommendations for furthering the scale development and validation of common measures.

Culturally aware mentorship: Lasting impacts of a novel intervention on academic administrators and faculty.

National efforts to address the diversity dilemma in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) often emphasize increasing numbers of historically underrepresented (HU) students and faculty, but fall short in instituting concrete changes for inclusion and belonging. Therefore, increasing the pool of senior faculty who wish to become guides and advocates for emerging scientists from HU populations is an essential step toward creating new pathways for their career advancement. As a step toward achieving this goal, we created a novel eight-hour intervention on Culturally Aware Mentoring (CAM), a program of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) targeted to faculty and administrators. A previous report of surveys at the end of the CAM sessions revealed substantial awareness and knowledge gains, with participants expressing intentions to use and implement new skills they had learned. In this paper, we provide the results of our thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with academic administrators and faculty, 18-24 months after participation in CAM. Interviews were designed to determine: 1) What changes in self-perceptions and interactions occurred as a result of participation in CAM? 2) What specific components of CAM are associated with changes in individual beliefs and practices? 3) How did participants actively make changes after the CAM workshop? 4) What barriers or challenges do participants encounter after the CAM intervention? The results demonstrate the lasting influences of CAM on participants' awareness of cultural differences, their assumptions about and approaches toward interactions with colleagues and students, and their efforts to change their behaviors to promote inclusive practices in their mentoring and teaching of HU students in STEM. Our findings provide evidence that CAM can be incorporated into existing mentor training programs designed to improve the confidence and capacity of senior research faculty mentors to make culturally-informed, scholar-centered decisions to more deliberately recognize and respond to cultural differences within their mentoring and collegial relationships.

The role of mentors in addressing issues of work-life integration in an academic research environment.

INTRODUCTION: There is growing evidence for both the need to manage work-life conflict and the opportunity for mentors to advise their mentees on how to do this in an academic research environment. METHODS: A multiphase approach was used to develop and implement an evidence-informed training module to help mentors guide their mentees in issues of work-life conflict. Analysis of existing data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a mentor training curriculum (n = 283 mentor/mentee dyads) informed the development of a work-life mentoring module which was incorporated into an established research mentor training curriculum and evaluated by faculty at a single academic medical center. RESULTS: Only 39% of mentors and 36% of mentees in the RCT indicated high satisfaction with the balance between their personal and professional lives. The majority (75%) of mentors and mentees were sharing personal information as part of the mentoring relationship which was significantly associated with mentees' ratings of the balance between their personal and professional lives. The effectiveness of the work-life module was assessed by 60 faculty mentors participating in a mentor training program at an academic medical center from 2013 to 2017. Among the respondents to the post-training survey, 82.5% indicated they were very/somewhat comfortable addressing work-life issues with their mentees as a result of the training, with significant improvements (p = 0.001) in self-assessments of mentoring skill in this domain. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that a structured training approach can significantly improve mentors' self-reported skills in addressing work-life issues with their mentees.

A new approach to mentoring for research careers: the National Research Mentoring Network.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Effective mentorship is critical to the success of early stage investigators, and has been linked to enhanced mentee productivity, self-efficacy, and career satisfaction. The mission of the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) is to provide all trainees across the biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences with evidence-based mentorship and professional development programming that emphasizes the benefits and challenges of diversity, inclusivity, and culture within mentoring relationships, and more broadly the research workforce. The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure and activities of NRMN. KEY HIGHLIGHTS: NRMN serves as a national training hub for mentors and mentees striving to improve their relationships by better aligning expectations, promoting professional development, maintaining effective communication, addressing equity and inclusion, assessing understanding, fostering independence, and cultivating ethical behavior. Training is offered in-person at institutions, regional training, or national meetings, as well as via synchronous and asynchronous platforms; the growing training demand is being met by a cadre of NRMN Master Facilitators. NRMN offers career stage-focused coaching models for grant writing, and other professional development programs. NRMN partners with diverse stakeholders from the NIH-sponsored Diversity Program Consortium (DPC), as well as organizations outside the DPC to work synergistically towards common diversity goals. NRMN offers a virtual portal to the Network and all NRMN program offerings for mentees and mentors across career development stages. NRMNet provides access to a wide array of mentoring experiences and resources including MyNRMN, Guided Virtual Mentorship Program, news, training calendar, videos, and workshops. National scale and sustainability are being addressed by NRMN "Coaches-in-Training" offerings for more senior researchers to implement coaching models across the nation. "Shark Tanks" provide intensive review and coaching for early career health disparities investigators, focusing on grant writing for graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and junior faculty. IMPLICATIONS: Partners from diverse perspectives are building the national capacity and sparking the institutional changes necessary to truly diversify and transform the biomedical research workforce. NRMN works to leverage resources towards the goals of sustainability, scalability, and expanded reach.

Building national capacity for research mentor training: an evidence-based approach to training the trainers.

Research mentor training (RMT), based on the published Entering Mentoring curricula series, has been shown to improve the knowledge and skills of research mentors across career stages, as self-reported by both the mentors engaged in training and their mentees. To promote widespread dissemination and empower others to implement this evidence-based training at their home institutions, we developed an extensive, interactive, multifaceted train-the-trainer workshop. The specific goals of these workshops are to 1) increase facilitator knowledge of an RMT curriculum, 2) increase facilitator confidence in implementing the curriculum, 3) provide a safe environment to practice facilitation of curricular activities, and 4) review implementation strategies and evaluation tools. Data indicate that our approach results in high satisfaction and significant confidence gains among attendees. Of the 195 diverse attendees trained in our workshops since Fall 2010, 44% report implementation at 39 different institutions, collectively training more than 500 mentors. Further, mentors who participated in the RMT sessions led by our trained facilitators report high facilitator effectiveness in guiding discussion. Implications and challenges to building the national capacity needed for improved research mentoring relationships are discussed.

Training mentors of clinical and translational research scholars: a randomized controlled trial.

PURPOSE: To determine whether a structured mentoring curriculum improves research mentoring skills. METHOD: The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) at 16 academic health centers (June 2010 to July 2011). Faculty mentors of trainees who were conducting clinical/translational research ≥50% of the time were eligible. The intervention was an eight-hour, case-based curriculum focused on six mentoring competencies. The primary outcome was the change in mentors' self-reported pretest to posttest composite scores on the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA). Secondary outcomes included changes in the following: mentors' awareness as measured by their self-reported retrospective change in MCA scores, mentees' ratings of their mentors' competency as measured by MCA scores, and mentoring behaviors as reported by mentors and their mentees. RESULTS: A total of 283 mentor-mentee pairs were enrolled: 144 mentors were randomized to the intervention; 139 to the control condition. Self-reported pre-/posttest change in MCA composite scores was higher for mentors in the intervention group compared with controls (P < .001). Retrospective changes in MCA composite scores between the two groups were even greater, and extended to all six subscale scores (P < .001). More intervention-group mentors reported changes in their mentoring practices than control mentors (P < .001). Mentees working with intervention-group mentors reported larger changes in retrospective MCA pre-/posttest scores (P = .003) and more changes in their mentors' behavior (P = .002) than those paired with control mentors. CONCLUSIONS: This RCT demonstrates that a competency-based research mentor training program can improve mentors' skills.

The Mentoring Competency Assessment: validation of a new instrument to evaluate skills of research mentors.

PURPOSE: To determine the psychometric properties of the Mentoring Competency Assessment (MCA), a 26-item skills inventory that enables research mentors and mentees to evaluate six competencies of mentors: maintaining effective communication, aligning expectations, assessing understanding, addressing diversity, fostering independence, and promoting professional development. METHOD: In 2010, investigators administered the MCA to 283 mentor-mentee pairs from 16 universities participating in a trial of a mentoring curriculum for clinical and translational research mentors. The authors analyzed baseline MCA data to describe the instrument's psychometric properties. RESULTS: Coefficient alpha scores for the MCA showed reliability (internal consistency). The hypothesized model with its six latent constructs (competencies) resulted in an acceptable fit to the data. For the instrument completed by mentors, chi-square = 663.20; df = 284; P < .001; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.069 (90% CI, 0.062-0.076); comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.85; and Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.83. For the instrument completed by mentees, chi-square = 840.62; df = 284; P < .001; RMSEA = 0.080 (90% CI, 0.063-0.077); CFI = 0.87; and TLI = 0.85. The correlations among the six competencies were high: 0.49-0.87 for mentors, 0.58-0.92 for mentees. All parameter estimates for the individual items were significant; standardized factor loadings ranged from 0.32 to 0.81 for mentors and 0.56 to 0.86 for mentees. CONCLUSIONS: The findings demonstrate that the MCA has reliability and validity. In addition, this study provides preliminary norms derived from a national sample of mentors and mentees.

A research mentor training curriculum for clinical and translational researchers.

PURPOSE: To design and evaluate a research mentor training curriculum for clinical and translational researchers. The resulting 8-hour curriculum was implemented as part of a national mentor training trial. METHOD: The mentor training curriculum was implemented with 144 mentors at 16 academic institutions. Facilitators of the curriculum participated in a train-the-trainer workshop to ensure uniform delivery. The data used for this report were collected from participants during the training sessions through reflective writing, and following the last training session via confidential survey with a 94% response rate. RESULTS: A total of 88% of respondents reported high levels of satisfaction with the training experience, and 90% noted they would recommend the training to a colleague. Participants also reported significant learning gains across six mentoring competencies as well as specific impacts of the training on their mentoring practice. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest the described research mentor training curriculum is an effective means of engaging research mentors to reflect upon and improve their research mentoring practices. The training resulted in high satisfaction, self-reported skill gains as well as behavioral changes of clinical and translational research mentors. Given success across 16 diverse sites, this training may serve as a national model.