Youth mentoring is the process of matching mentors with young people who need or want a caring, responsible adult in their lives. Adult mentors are usually unrelated to the child or teen and work as volunteers through a community-, school-, or church-based social service program. The goal of youth mentoring programs is to improve the well-being of the child by providing a role model that can support the child academically, socially and/or personally. This goal can be accomplished through school work, communication, and/or activities. Goals and settings within a mentoring program vary by country because of cultural values. Although informal mentoring relationships exist, formal, high-quality mentoring matches made through local or state mentoring organizations are often the most effective. According to The Encyclopedia of Informal Education: "The classic definition of mentoring is of an older experienced guide who is acceptable to the young person and who can help ease the transition to adulthood by a mix of support and challenge. In this sense it is a developmental relationship in which the young person is inducted into the world of adulthood." Mentoring effects Research Much research has been conducted on youth mentoring with the intent of determining whether or not there are positive benefits for youth and, if so, under what conditions the positive effects are most likely to occur. The evidence is somewhat mixed, however, and studies caution against overestimating the potential effects due to the small overall magnitude of association. According to some studies, not all mentoring programs are found to have positive effects. In some cases, youth involved in mentoring relationships of short duration or infrequent interactions with their mentors experienced no benefits or were harmed in the form of lower self-esteem. Even studies that demonstrated positive outcomes for youth suggested that benefits from mentoring do not always last for an extended period of time after the intervention has ended. Meta-analysis One method of determining how effective mentoring relationships have become is with the use of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis allows a researcher to synthesize several studies and has been said to provide an unbiased, objective, and quantifiable method to test for significant differences in the results found across studies. Two studies utilizing this method are presented below. In a meta-analysis of 55 studies on mentoring programs, the overall effectiveness of mentoring as well as the factors relating to variation in mentoring effects were studied. In this study, articles found