Affirming the Impact of Faculty Mentoring in Context of Workplace Bullying (2021)

Often academics find themselves in a panic dealing with workplace bullying. Issues about stress and anxiety are often reported in the open-ended survey comments, which are saturated with respondents’ hurt and frustration. Further, those in the weaker positions, such as graduate students, post-doctoral colleagues, and assistant professors without tenure often develop strategies to cope with the very people who bully them. To find a solution, I pondered if strong mentorship helps junior faculty assuage the impact of bullying. The sample for this study was n = 128 non-tenured assistant professors. Using family systems theory [Chambers, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 30(4), 235–246 (2009); Hooper, et al., Contemporary Family Therapy, 34, 29–43 (2012)], I created a multiple regression study with one dependent variable and five independent variables. The findings revealed that the mentor’s knowledge was a statistically significant variable to mitigate perceptions of bullying. Hence, this chapter will review how to develop specific variables in instruments for predictive analysis. The Cronbach’s Alpha process is presented step-by-step, and the chapter continues with the dissemination procedures and the findings; then the actual instrument is presented. The chapter also discusses the solo-authored book of which this data is a part.