Psychometric Evaluation of the Revised Collaboration for Leadership and Innovation in Mentoring Survey in a Diverse PhD Student Sample

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the internal consistency reliability and structural validity of the Collaboration for Leadership and Innovation in Mentoring (CLIM) survey, a measure of PhD mentor/mentee relationship quality. Learning Objective Participants will learn aspects of survey development and psychometric evaluation, including application of principal components analysis Questions/Hypothesis Is the CLIM survey reliable and valid when administered to a diverse sample of PhD students? Theoretical Framework/Rationale Quality mentorship plays a significant role in successful PhD education. Our previously developed 44-item CLIM survey showed preliminary evidence of reliability and validity among nursing PhD students but has not been evaluated using a heterogeneous PhD student population. Methods Of 5,539 PhD students at a large public university, 819 completed the 44-item CLIM survey (response rate 14.8%). Individual item and total scores were described using descriptive statistics (ranges, means, standard deviations). Principal components analysis was used to identify the underlying component structure and reduce the number of items. Internal consistency reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha. Results The sample was 58.2% male, representing 19 PhD programs with engineering being the most common. Total scores ranged from 15-110 (mean = 81.57; SD = 15.42) (higher scores indicate higher mentorship quality). The survey was reduced to 22 items across 6 components: 1) Working together, 2) Mentor availability, 3) Mentoring teams and goals, 4) Shared research interests, 5) Mutual respect, and 6) Mentor benefit. Internal consistency reliability of the reduced survey was 0.89. Conclusions The findings suggest that the revised 22-item CLIM survey (now called CLIM-22) is a reliable and valid standardized measure of PhD mentorship quality that can be used across heterogeneous PhD programs beyond nursing.