Conceptualization and Initial Validation of the College Student Mentoring Scale (CSMS)

The prevalence of conceptually valid mentoring relationships in higher education is currently unknown due to a lack of a valid conceptualization within the literature. This article examines the construct validity of College Student Mentoring Scale (CSMS) with an eye toward identifying developmental support functions that should be provided to students. Participants were selected from a stratified random sample of courses offered in the fall of 2006 at a community college in the south-central area of the United States (n = 351). Results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated the constructs were valid and a higher-order factor analysis revealed the existence of a second-order construct, Mentoring. Goodness of fit statistics suggested that the best fitting model did not hold well across ethnic groups however, the hypothesized factor structure was invariant for men and women. Implications for student affairs practice and future research are discussed.