Evaluating a Coaching and Mentoring Program

Abstract

This paper describes an independently conducted research study to develop appropriate measures and evaluate the coaching/mentoring program that the London Deanery had been running for over 5 years. It also aims to explore specific challenges in the evaluation of a large-scale coaching program and to suggest new solutions. The challenges to evaluation included the need to use established but also context-relevant measures and the need for a rigorous but also pragmatic design that took into account a number of practical constraints. Overall, it was a mixed-method research design consisting of a within-subject quantitative study with the support of a qualitative grounded theory methodology conducted in parallel. The selected measures for the quantitative part of the study included employee engagement, self-efficacy, and self-compassion. An additional questionnaire, the SWRQ (Specific Work-Related Questionnaire), was developed as the result of a qualitative investigation with stakeholder representatives. It included a self-estimation by the coached clients of the extent to which they could attribute each change to the coaching received rather than any other factor. The qualitative part of the study included interviews with stakeholders and the analysis of responses to an open question in the SWRQ. One hundred and twenty (78%) of matched responses pre- and post-coaching were analyzed and seven stakeholders interviewed. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses show improvement in all chosen scales. The analyses also show that coaching was a major contributor to these changes. The paper argues for the development of additional methods in outcome research on coaching programs that are aligned with the main principles and philosophy of coaching as a practice.

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