Group differences in graduate students' concepts of the ideal mentor

Graduate students differ in their conceptualizations of mentoring. This study examined the relationship between students' demographic and academic characteristics (age, gender, citizenship, academic discipline, and stage of persistence) and their preferences for three styles of mentoring assessed by the Ideal Mentor Scale (IMS): Integrity, Guidance, and Relationship. Students enrolled in Ph.D. programs at one of two Midwestern Research I Universities (n = 537) completed the IMS, rating the importance of each of 34 mentor attributes on a 5-point likert type scale. MANCOVA yielded significant differences for demographic but not academic variables: women scored higher than men on Integrity, international students scored higher than domestic on Relationship, and age was inversely related to Relationship scores. No group differences were found on the Guidance scale. These findings indicate that graduate students' perceptions of the ideal mentor are influenced somewhat by major socio-cultural factors, but also suggest that individual differences may play a larger role.