perceived the presence of a mentor and those who had a substantial and consistent or

"quality" relationship.

 The majority of the mentoring relationships was stable and consistent. Eighty-

three percent knew their mentors for more than one year, 45% saw them everyday, and

50% spent over four hours at a typical visit. The average amount of trust and confiding

the youths reported was also high (mean = 2.67; range 0 to 3).

 The following cutoffs were developed to define a quality mentoring relationship:

* Frequency of visits: At least weekly,
* Length of visits: At least one hour,
* Duration of the relationship: Six months or longer,
* Trust and confiding subscale: Those that scored at least a mean of 2.0.

Descriptive information is provided in Table 4-5. These criteria allowed for the creation

of two new groups, those with a quality mentoring relationship (n = 144) and those

without (n = 163).

Table 4-5. Descriptive statistics for quality mentoring items
 n (%) above cutoff n (%) under cutoff
 Frequency of contact 214 (81.7) 48 (18.3)

 Duration of typical contact 223 (85.4) 38 (14.6)

 Duration of relationship 213 (90.6) 22 (9.4)

 Trust and confiding subscale (c = .83) 238 (92.2) 20 (7.8)

 Natural Mentors and Adolescent Mental Health

 The research questions related to the presence of natural mentors, the presence of

quality mentoring relationships, and adolescent mental health were answered using two

Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVAs). The statistical rationale for using

MANOVA included the significant correlations between dependent measures and the

desire to reduce the risk for Type I error by repeated univariate analyses (Weinfurt,