The practical significance of the theory of mentors’ roles including
four mentor functions specified in the literature are; career support,
intellectual growth, psychosocial development and research supervision,
have been investigated empirically in the private and public sector
universities. The perceived mentorship behaviour model has been
formulated and tested by evaluating 335 PhD faculty members as mentors
from 19 public sectors and 180 from 8 private sector universities. The
demographic and professional characteristics of the mentors have been
analyzed for mean differences by taking a random sample of 515 PhD
faculty members, out of which a total of 440 responded to a structured
research instrument. Responses have been analyzed using stratified
random sampling technique which revealed that the research model is
statistically significant in explaining the mentorship functions in terms of
demographic and professional characteristics of mentors. However, gender
and research supervision have been identified as significantly different in
terms of mentorship of the mentees by mentors in private versus public
sector universities.