Project Activities
Researchers will follow an iterative process to develop the Military Student Model. First, the research team will develop the components and protocols for MSM’s service-delivery model and mentoring model. Researchers will then train staff and volunteers to identify, engage, and refer military students to MSM and also will train staff and volunteers to implement the school-based mentoring. Researchers will then collect evidence on feasibility by implementing MSM and gathering feedback from participants, school districts, and staff. Finally, researchers will conduct a pilot study assessing the promise of MSM to improve military student outcomes.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project will take place in elementary schools near Olympia, WA.
Sample
Participants will include 100 elementary school students whose military parents have experienced deployment related stress.
Intervention
The MSM service delivery model includes multiple components, including a district-level coordinator, school-specific home-school-partnership (HSC) action teams, and adult volunteers who provide school based mentoring. A district-level coordinator is tasked with forging home-school-community (HSC) partnerships that link local schools, military families, and community organizations in an effort to serve military students. School-specific HSC Action Teams comprise a school liaison, a military parent, and a community organization representative. These teams are responsible for identifying and engaging military families, referring military students for school-based mentoring, and for recruiting adult volunteers to serve as mentors. In the MSM school-based mentoring model, students are paired with adult volunteers who are screened, trained to address the needs of students in military families, and supported by local mentoring agencies. School-based mentoring is done weekly over the course of one year.
Research design and methods
The research design for this study follows a three-stage process. In Stage 1, researchers will focus on the initial development of the MSM, including creating components and protocols for the service-delivery model and the mentoring model. Reliable delivery of mentoring to school-aged children of military members (military students) is likely to be a challenge, especially for students whose families do not live near a military base. Researchers will survey districts with experience serving these students in order to identify challenges to service delivery and effective strategies for identifying and engaging military families and students. Researchers will then develop protocols to train the mentoring coordinator and home-school-community action teams to identify, engage, and refer military students to school-based mentoring. Next the researchers will develop the mentoring model based on lessons-learned from prior mentoring projects for military students (such as the Big Brothers Big Sisters San Diego’s Operation Bigs). They will develop a mentoring manual with specific protocols for all of the mentoring components. Both the mentoring and service delivery development will be informed by feedback from service agencies and parents. In Stage 2, researchers will collect evidence on feasibility by implementing MSM and then gathering feedback from participants, school districts, and staff. In Stage 3, researchers will conduct a pilot study using a randomized control trial design to test the expected outcomes of MSM.
Control condition
In the “wait-list” control condition, students will not receive mentoring during the pilot test. They will be matched with a mentor in the year following the pilot test.
Key measures
Proximal outcomes include student engagement in mentoring, student social support, and parental stress. To assess student’s perceptions of support from parents, researchers will use two different measures. The first is the Trust subscale from the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment. Also, students will be asked to complete Goodenow’s (1993) Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM), used by many researchers to assess school belonging. Distal outcomes include academic functioning (e.g., grades, attendance, school belonging) and social/emotional functioning (e.g., self-worth, social acceptance, misconduct, symptoms of anxiety and depression). Assessment of academic functioning in pilot study will include teacher-reported attendance (e.g., unexcused absences) and grades, as well as scales that assess quality of class work and number of assignments completed . Teachers will also complete the Scholastic Competence subscale of the Teacher Rating Scale (TRS) of Actual Behavior (Harter, 1995). This 15-item measure is designed to parallel Harter’s (1995) Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC). Children will also complete the Global Self-Worth subscale of the SPPC.
Data analytic strategy
Researchers will use repeated measures multivariate analyses of covariance to test for change in each of the four outcome domains (student social support, parental stress, academic performance, and social/emotional functioning). Effect size estimates of key outcomes will be determined. In the service of further strengthening the service delivery model and to better understand the elements of mentoring that might explain variability in students’ level of engagement in mentoring (the hypothesized change mechanism), researchers will conduct supplemental analyses examining the predictive utility of measures of program fidelity. Researchers will compute simple bivariate correlations between student engagement and mentors’ perceptions of staff support, knowledge of military families and youth mentoring, and consistency of visits. Researchers will conduct a qualitative examination of program participants’ perspectives by completing a thematic analysis of the transcripts of the individual interviews with mentors, parents and teachers.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products for this project will be a fully developed Military Student Mentoring service delivery model and a school-based mentoring model to identify and assist military students experiencing Deployment Related Stress (DRS). Peer reviewed publications will also be produced.
Project website:
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Renee Spencer, Boston University
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
