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Shaw, Robert Brian

University of British Columbia

Spinal cord injury (SCI) peer mentorship typically involves interactions between two individuals where one (the mentor) provides support to the other (the mentee). Mentees associate a wide variety of positive physical, and psychosocial outcomes with this service. Interestingly, despite the known benefits of peer mentoring, little is known about the impact of certain delivery characteristics (i.e., interaction modality) on the quality of this service. Given how multifaceted this service is, understanding the impact that specific delivery characteristics have on the quality of peer mentorship is critical for ensuring that peer mentorship programs are providing the best possible service. This dissertation aimed to deconstruct the delivery of peer mentorship to determine what delivery characteristics are currently utilized in SCI peer mentorship research and community programming and examine the impact of interaction modality on leadership behaviours and counselling skills of peer mentors. First, a scoping review was conducted to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the research evidence regarding delivery characteristics of research-based peer mentorship interventions for people with SCI. Second, an environmental scan was conducted to support the scoping review by examining delivery characteristics of peer mentorship programs delivered by community organizations across Canada. Third, a qualitative study, informed by the tenets of transformational leadership theory (Bass & Riggio, 2006) was performed to examine leadership behaviours used by SCI peer mentors. Lastly, an experimental within-subjects design was used to study the effects of interaction modality on the leadership behaviours, motivational interviewing skills and behaviour change techniques used by SCI peer mentors. Overall, SCI peer mentorship is being delivered through a variety of modalities (e.g., telephone, video-chat) in both research and community-based programs. During SCI peer mentorship, mentors use a range of leadership behaviours and counselling skills, but the use of these behaviours/skills does not seem to differ between telephone and video-chat interactions. While Canadian peer mentorship programs can have confidence that similar quality mentorship is being provided through telephone and video chat modalities, further research is needed to examine the impact of other interaction modalities (e.g., face-to-face) and delivery characteristics (e.g., matching criteria) on the quality of SCI peer mentorship services.

Text

2021-06-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78830

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/