Date of Award

1990

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Science

Keywords

mentor, nursing, professional development

Abstract

Mentoring is viewed as a viable developmental process for nurses that promotes professional maturation, career satisfaction, and strong, competent leaders. Personal and organizational variables related to mentoring, such as mentoring potential, professional success, immediate organizational climate, general organizational climate, and experience as a mentee, have been described in the theoretical and research literature. A conceptual model for this investigation was developed which related these variables to the mentors' perceptions of the strength of their strongest mentoring relationship. The purpose of this study was to establish the strength of the relationships delineated in the model. The model was tested on 125 recruited mentors who were randomly divided into two groups: a screening sample of 75 to establish a multiple regression equation and a calibration sample of 50 to cross validate the regression results. Results indicated that mentoring potential was the only significant independent variable and accounted for 18% of the variance in the strength of the mentoring relationship. Cross validation results supported the multiple regression findings. Multiple regression results and content analysis of qualitative data suggested a revised model for future testing with the following independent variables: mentoring potential, professional success, organizational climate, and mentee attributes.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Nursing

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Nursing Commons

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