Exploring organizational digital readiness to offer youth E-Mentoring

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted many youth mentoring programs to offer digital services (e-mentoring). The sustained success of these efforts depended, in large part, on organizations’ digital readiness. Although there are established, broad measures of digital readiness, mentoring organizations have unique requirements for readiness that have not been previously measured. The current cross-sectional survey research study measured the state of digital readiness for youth mentoring organizations and tested the organizational E-Mentoring Readiness Scale. Ninety-five representatives from U.S. mentoring programs completed an online survey. Participants felt mentors, mentees, and families were moderately comfortable with e-mentoring. There was less confidence and comfort with the required technology and execution of e-mentoring. A confirmatory factor analysis of the E-Mentoring Readiness Scale showed two distinct but related factors with good model fit. An honest assessment using this tool may allow the youth mentoring field to move into the digital age more seamlessly.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• e-mentoring
• youth development
• digital mentoring
• digital readiness
• technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2024.2349013

Notes

¹ MENTOR is not an acronym. The organization uses all capital letters in their branding.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K01DA042138. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Foundation or the National Institutes of Health.