Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between a mentoring intervention and the self-efficacy of wildland fire mentors in building working relationships with protégées. The intervention, spanning 8 weeks, combined synchronous weekly live sessions with asynchronous independent readings and was grounded in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory (1977). The primary focus of this research was to evaluate how a mentoring intervention program affected the self-efficacy of emerging wildland fire mentors in the context of building connections with their protégées.This study used a one-group pretest-posttest-quasi-experimental design, often described as a nonrandomized, pre-post intervention study (Harris et al., 2006). Twenty-five participants enrolled in the study, with eighteen participants completing both the pretest and posttest assessments, achieving a response rate of 72%. The main outcome measures were general self-efficacy, ethical leadership, and mentoring self-efficacy improvement.
The results indicated a significant increase in general self-efficacy (p = .031) and a highly significant increase in mentoring self-efficacy (p < .001), supporting the respective research questions. However, there was no significant change in ethical leadership skills (p = .182), which did not support the related research question.
The findings revealed that additional training significantly enhances mentors’ self-efficacy in cultivating productive relationships with protégées. These results carry significant implications for the wildland fire community, particularly in terms of facilitating recruitment, promoting diversity, and supporting the mental well-being of wildland firefighters.