Abstract
Peer mentoring has emerged as a viable retention strategy to aid higher education institutions in their efforts to ensure freshmen students make it through that crucial first year and beyond and obtain that degree. Although peer mentoring has been in existence for decades and, there is increasing research on this topic, there are no reviews of the literature more recent than 2009. Utilizing an integrative literature review, the research presented in this article provides an overview of current existing peer mentoring literature specific to its impact on stress and adjustment in the first year of college and retention outcomes in higher education. Findings from this study are aimed at informing best practices in first-year college retention efforts and raising awareness among higher education professionals on the psychosocial challenges many college freshmen bring with them and how it can negatively impact retention outcomes.
Introduction
Every year, U.S. higher education institutions spend a significant amount of money on recruiting students into their institutions. However, many higher education institutions continue to be challenged by how best to serve those students who struggle with making the transition from high school to college and, as a result, dropout, transfer to another institution, or take longer than 4 years to obtain a degree (Lotkowski, Robbins, & Noeth, 2004). Persistence rate refers to the percent of students who return to any college to start their sophomore year, whereas retention rate refers to the percent of students who return to the same institution for their sophomore year (National Student Clearing House [NSCH], 2017).
The NSCH (2017) reports of all students who started college full time in Fall 2015 in any public, private, or for-profit institution, only 61% returned to the same institution in Fall 2016. Meanwhile, 12.3% transferred to another U.S. institution, for a total student persistence rate of 73.4%. The overall persistence rate for the Fall 2015 entering cohort represented a slight drop from that of the previous cohort (−0.2 percentage points).
Although the U.S. college persistence rates have overall improved from the Fall 2009 cohort, by 1.9% (NSCH, 2017), another alarming phenomenon continues: The 6-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at a 4-year degree-granting institution in Fall 2009 was 59%. What this means is, 59% had completed a bachelor’s degree by 2015 at the same institution where they started in 2009. Even more alarming, in their effort to tackle the 4-year graduation myth, the Complete College America (2014) found that most students at public universities do not graduate in the traditional 4-year time frame. For a nonflagship public university, only 19% of students graduate on time and even at flagship research public universities, the on-time graduation rate is only 36%. Only 50 of the more than 580 public 4-year institutions have graduation rates above 50%.
One of the biggest consequences of either not completing college or taking longer than originally budgeted (both in time and money) is the financial costs students or their families incur. Students and their families are trying desperately to control the skyrocketing costs of higher education. As lifetime savings are depleted and financial aid packages run out, the extra time on campus means even more debt, and as the statistics suggest, for far too many students, additional semesters do not result in a degree or credential (Complete College America, 2014).
Student retention is influenced by a variety of factors both academic and nonacademic. Nonacademic factors such as self-confidence, lack of academic goals, social support, and the inability to socially and academically integrate into college life heavily influence a college student’s journey to successfully finishing that crucial first year and beyond and obtaining the 4-year degree (Lotkowski et al., 2004). As a result, stress can become a very real psychosocial factor that can have negative consequences on a transitioning college student’s academic and social domains (Stecker, 2004). Those students who have difficulty handling stress may struggle to adjust to the many academic and social pressures associated with transitioning to college life and, as a result, are at risk of academic failure and or dropping out (Shields, 2001).
Peer mentoring has emerged as a viable strategy in higher education institutions to increase retention rates and, overall, support the whole student as they transition to college life. Further, research suggests that peer mentoring can assist with the successful social and academic integration into college and buffer the potential negative effects, such as stress during the transition (Collins, Swanson, & Watkins, 2014) which can have positive impacts on retention and persistence rates.
Peer mentoring involves a more experienced upper class student supporting an underclass student with social, emotional, or academic domains of the college (Kram, 1985). Although the practice of peer mentoring has existed for decades in several disciplines including business, health, and education, formal peer mentoring in higher education as a strategy to ensure a positive academic and social transition and serve as a persistence and retention strategy is relatively novel (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). Therefore, this integrative literature review will highlight peer mentoring research efforts in higher education that address the psychosocial factor of stress in first-year college students and its potential positive impact on retention.
Methodology
An integrative literature review is a “form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes literature on a topic in an integrated way that generates new frameworks and perspectives on a topic” (Torraco, 2005, p. 356). Most integrative literature reviews are intended to address mature or new, emerging topics. However, this review is addressing both aspects consistent of an integrative review (mature or emerging topics), as peer mentoring has existed in higher education for decades (mature), and it is only in the last decade that it has emerged as a viable higher education retention strategy (new). In an attempt to pose provocative questions that will stimulate future research, research agenda (Torraco, 2005), a form of synthesis utilized in integrative literature reviews, was employed for this review.
As mentioned earlier, peer mentoring has existed for several decades in a variety of arenas; however, formalized practice in higher education institutions is a relatively new phenomenon. Moreover, the last review on the topic was conducted in 2009 (Crisp & Cruz, 2009), and we are overdue for another. Although the goal of this integrative review is to inform best practices in first-year college retention efforts on the psychosocial challenges many college freshmen bring with them and how it can negatively impact retention outcomes, this review will also emphasize a few of the critical methodological and theoretical gaps of this promising intervention that still exist since the previous review of the literature and prevents the production of sound research on this seemingly impactful intervention.
The data sought for this review were articles on peer mentoring in higher education that focused on programs addressing the first year of college and went back as far as 2010. In addition, this review did not exclude non-U.S. research. Data were collected from the following databases: Google Scholar, Ebsco, ProQuest, CINAHL, and ERIC. The inclusion criteria for electronic sources from 2010 to present was limited to primary source and peer review reports on peer mentoring, first-year college retention, and academic and social stress in higher education.
Also included in this review are two previous literature reviews specific to the topical focus of this article: Jacobi (1991): “Mentoring and Undergraduate Academic Success: A Literature Review” and Crisp and Cruz (2009): “Mentoring College Students: A Critical Review of the Literature Between 1990 and 2007.” Both articles contribute perspective and relevant findings to this topic in terms of their research contributions and continued unaddressed issues surrounding peer mentoring in higher education.
In addition to the articles identified in the initial search, snowballing was employed in attempt to locate further studies. Snowballing is a process of identifying suitable articles from references of selected studies. The process of the integrative review is presented in Figure 1.
Article Identification Process.
The search terms included peer mentoring, higher education, student retention, first-year college student success, academic stress, social stress, and transition to college. Terms were utilized both individually and in a combination to maximize search results.
Overview of Characteristics of Studies Included in This article
A broad range of peer mentoring interventions were reviewed and considered for inclusion such as group or individual programing and face-to-face, e-mail, social media, phone, or texting interactions, and if they fit the selection criteria, they were included in the review. Further, studies involving full-time, first-year undergraduate college students (in a 2- or 4-year institution) in all disciplines were included. Literature was evaluated for methodological quality and informational value. Resources were initially identified based on their titles. The abstracts of the selected titles were analyzed in accordance to their relevance to the four criteria put forth in this review.
In the end, all literature published from 2010 to the present that addressed peer mentoring, college retention, and academic and social integration as related to stress in higher education were subjected to a full-text review. The data could contain one or all of the four criteria to be eligible for a full review. The seven articles selected were considered central to this review (Table 1). Appendix illustrates the criteria applied in analyzing and summarizing the data subject to a full review.
Selected Articles.
Analysis of the Data
For most first-year college students, transitioning to their new environment stress is a very real psychosocial factor that, if not dealt with timely and appropriately, can be detrimental to a successful transition. New academic structures and expectations, homesickness, loneliness, uncertainty, and feelings of being socially disconnected can create an incredible amount of stress (Collins et al., 2014). Overall, the findings from this review reflect the belief that peer mentoring is an effective strategy for providing first-year college students valuable psychosocial support as it relates to managing stress. However, as the two earlier reviews of peer mentoring research (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Jacobi, 1991) discovered, two key elements associated with peer mentoring research to be true: (a) Theoretical research is needed to better understand how peer mentoring is linked to retention and (b) More experimental or quasi-experimental longitudinal research is needed to valid to positive impact of peer mentoring on student retention (and overall college student outcomes). These key findings from the earlier work are echoes in more recent work.
Collins et al. (2014) investigated the role of peer mentoring in a higher education setting with a specific focus on aiding the transition and integration into university for new students in the first year. The quantitative comparison of two universities (one university with a peer mentoring program and the other without a peer mentoring program) utilizing survey methodology, administered 5 days into the semester and after 10 weeks of the first semester, found that significant differing levels of integration into college existed between the peer mentored university and the non-peer mentored (NPM) university. The NPM university students were four times more likely to want to leave university 10 weeks into their first semester.
In addition, the Collins et al. (2014) study also explored in their research efforts to test whether mentored students would show significantly lower levels of stress. They found that peer mentoring moderated the impact of transitional stress on perceived social support, self-esteem, and positive effect. Specifically, NPM students experienced decreases in self-esteem whereas peer mentored individuals experienced no changes.
Ward, Thomas, and Disch (2010) in their mixed methods study of 34 underclassmen found that 93% of the freshmen in a small U.S. urban university who participated in a peer mentoring project returned the following fall semester to their original course of study. Their findings support the conclusions of Nora and Crisp (2007–2008) research that holistic peer mentoring programs that provide emotional support, goal setting, and career path development as well as academic subject support have a positive impact on student persistence and retention.
Fullick, Smith-Jentsch, Yarbrough, and Scielzo (2012) found that psychosocial support received from a first-year mentoring program had a positive relationship with stress reduction. They hypothesized that psychosocial support provided during a formal mentoring program would be positively associated with stress reduction for first-year students. Their findings of a quasi-experimental study of 121 freshmen who partook in a formal mentoring program suggests when the mentor and mentee relationship are in alignment with career and academic goal attainment freshmen experienced reduced stress levels.
Snowden and Hardy’s (2012–2013;2013) ethnographic case study explored the effect of a peer mentorship on a group of nine freshmen students in their efforts to explore key factors that affect the learning experience of both the mentor and the first-year mentee. One of the investigative factors of their exploration was reducing stress and anxiety among mentees. Their findings suggest positive influences of the mentoring process in reducing stress and anxiety. Further, peer mentoring was found to enhance academic performance, retention, and student satisfaction, which ultimately can lead to positive retention outcomes. Although the Snowden and Hardy’s (2012-13) study has validity and reliability issues as a result of the research approach and small number of participants, their findings do reflect the findings of Campbell and Campbell (2007) longitudinal study that suggested mentorship does reduce stress and enhance academic performance for the mentee.
Finally, in their time series, nonexperimental study of first-year nursing students in Turkey who participated in a 14-week peer mentoring program, Demir et al. (2014) explored the impact of mentoring on the ways students cope with stress in their first year of college. Their findings suggest that students who participated in the mentoring program approached stress more optimistically and were able to cope with stress caused by the university environment post intervention.
Findings and Discussion
From a close-grained reading within and across the studies included for this review, four important issues arose regarding peer mentoring in higher education (Table 1):
Lack of a consistent peer mentoring definition, Theoretical and methodological issues of concern, Unexpected findings that impact program results, and International comparisons.
The Issue of Definition
Despite the continued suggested positive impact peer mentoring has on college student outcomes and, as Crisp and Cruz (2009) noted in their review of the literature, “mentoring research has made little progress in identifying and implementing a consistent definition and conceptualization of mentoring.” Further, they stated the peer mentoring “is largely atheoretical and is lacking in terms of rigorous quantitative research designs that allow for testing the external validity of findings” (p. 526).
Of the seven articles reviewed for this study, only two provided a definition of mentoring (both different definitions) in which to provide context for their studies (Demir et al., 2014; Fullick et al., 2012). Collins et al. (2014) acknowledged the absence of a universal definition but did not propose a potential or possible component of a universal definition. They implemented their study utilizing Tinto’s (1975) conceptual framework to examine peer mentoring within a higher education setting and its impact on student retention.
Methodological and Theoretical Issues of Concern
From a methodological perspective, some investigators are making progress to move the research beyond process evaluation to valid reliable research outcomes. Of the seven studies included in this review, two of the studies (Collins et al., 2014; Phinney, Torres-Campos, Padilla-Kallemeyn, & Kim, 2011) utilized quantitative experimental methodology. However, in both studies, students were not followed beyond the fall semester of freshmen and fall sophomore year, respectively. Therefore, the findings did not produce valuable longitudinal data that could lead to conclusive evidence suggesting its positive impact as a stress reliever that leads to student persistence in college past the first year.
Similarly, from a theoretical perspective, there still remains a gap in the research between practice and conclusive impactful student outcomes. Only two of the studies furthered the research to producing conclusive results and providing a foundation on which to build from in future research efforts by examining their research questions or hypothesis through a college attrition framework.
Tinto’s (1975) integration model of student attrition appears to be the most widely utilized (when a framework is actually utilized) in the peer mentoring research. The integration framework hypothesizes that the interaction between the student and the social and academic institution is a critical key to success in the first year of college. Essentially, Tinto argues integration into college on both an academic and social level plays a key role (beyond the student’s personal attributes) in students remaining in college beyond the first year. Out of the seven pieces of data included in this review, Collins et al. (2014) provided a thorough examination of mentoring effects on well-being, integration and retention through Tinto’s (1975) student integration model.
Collins et al. (2014) found that “Tinto’s (1975) construct of integration mediated the relationship between mentoring and retention and, peer mentoring moderated the impact of transitional stress on perceived social support, self-esteem and positive affect” (p. 937). Had they followed up with students in the spring and through the next academic year and beyond, their study could have been considered ground breaking in the peer mentoring and retention research.
Similarly, Phinney et al.’s (2011) research on effects of mentoring on Latino college freshmen utilized Ainsworth’s (1989) attachment theory and Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory in which to explain a decrease in depression and stress among first-year college freshmen as a result of peer mentoring. They also utilized a control group and followed their sample through the spring semester of freshmen year. Similar to the Collins et al.’s (2014) study, more conclusive findings could have been generated had they followed the students through their sophomore year and beyond.
Programmatic Aspect That Affect the Impact of Peer Mentoring
What was interesting, but not surprising, in the findings was the quality of the mentoring relationship between the mentor and mentee and its association with positive student outcomes as related to stress. Phinney et al. (2014) found that a good mentor or mentee connection was associated with the mentee’s sense of belonging to the university. Further, Fullick et al. (2012) found that formal mentoring relationships, in the short term, can reduce first-year stress but only if there is a match between the mentor and mentee in terms of common personality traits and academic goal achievement.
International Comparisons
Finally, the research explored for this literature review suggests that our Australian and European colleagues are at the forefront of both implementing more recent formal peer mentoring programs for first-year college students and taking a much needed big step toward producing valid and reliable research on its impactful benefits. This particular finding takes into account both articles that were included in this review and those articles that were reviewed and not included due to the criteria imposed for inclusion. This review suggests that despite the lack of a definition of mentoring in which to ground the study in and the lack of longitudinal findings, the Collins et al.’s (2014) study, which comes out of the United Kingdom, is the most thorough in terms of providing a methodologically strong design and a theoretical framework in which to examine the findings.
Conclusion
Current statistics on college retention suggest the retention of first-year college students in the United States is a large and significant problem that costs individuals and their families dearly. Further, this problem has financial ramifications for our economy and the strength of our society. Peer mentoring in the first year of college is a very useful strategy that emerged to address this issue, but the last thorough review of the literature was published in 2009. This article updated that state of affairs by providing an integrative review of research conducted on peer mentoring as it pertains to stress and the retention and the first-year college student published between 2010 and 2017. Seven articles fit the criteria for the study, and a fine grained analysis of this seven revealed that peer mentoring is of great benefit to addressing the issues that cause students to drop out in the first year of college.
Psychosocial factors, such as stress, appear to play a role in whether a student successfully integrates into college that critical first year and have a strong impact on whether the student remains in college past the first year. However, the lack of theoretical frameworks to guide research efforts continues to prevent us from advancing the literature beyond a program evaluation stage to a solid, conclusive research finding stage.
Tinto’s (1975) integration and social support framework appears to be most appropriate for assessing peer mentoring on retention as it relates to social and academic integration into college. However, future peer mentoring research needs to examine the social support aspect of mentoring and its role in preventing or buffering the negative effects of stress. In her review of the literature, Jacobi (1991) spoke of social support theory which focuses on the supportive relationships in preventing and reducing the negative effects of stress. Empirical studies have established that social support is an effective strategy in preventing or buffering individuals from the negative effects of stress (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Therefore, peer mentoring could be examined from a social support framework as to determine its effectiveness in preventing or buffering stress in the first-year college student.
Finally, this review highlights the continued inconsistency in how mentoring is defined or a definition is lacking all together in the current research. Without a consistent definition of mentoring in which to examine specific programmatic aspects of mentoring (such as the mentor or mentee matching), producing conclusive findings will continue to be a challenge. More research is clearly needed to provide a definitive understanding of the long-term success of these programs, as well as the components and strategies that make them successful across diverse populations.
Footnotes
Appendix (Format Adapted From Gikandi,Morrow,& Davis,2011 )
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.