University X alumni online survey data on potential role of mentorship in employment and employability

Dataset for a quantitative research. Kram's mentorship theory was used to frame the philosophical grounding of this study. Kram's mentorship theory helped to broaden the understanding of the link between institutional mentorship and employability. The researcher utilised a quantitative survey research approach to explore existing research gaps by determining the effects of institutional mentorship in developing graduates holistically and whether institutional mentorship could positively impact the graduate unemployment crisis. The survey questions targeted alumni of a South African higher education institution. Due to ethical, confidentiality and privacy implications, their responses were anonymized. Probability sampling techniques have been used in this study. In that regard, the selection of respondents was made to allow each member of the targeted population an equal chance to be part of the sample. Therefore, the simple random sampling technique was utilised. Secondly, purposive sampling was utilised to target alumni of University X who had access to the online platform. Accordingly, University X alumni had an equal opportunity to participate.

Data collected through the electronic survey were analyzed using Excel data analysis. The data analysis involved processing participants’ responses according to categories of individual and/ or groups of themes linked to the research problem, aim and questions. The editing process entailed verifying data captured by the software to ascertain accuracy and consistency between tables generated by the Excel data analysis.