https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9660-8448
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ABSTRACT
Objective
The Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) is a widely used six-item instrument for assessing hope in children. The CHS is thought to contain two dimensions—agency thinking (ability to initiate and sustain action towards goals) and pathways thinking (capacity to find a means to carry out goals)—but there is debate whether the scale is unidimensional rather than bidimensional and the factor structure has yet to be established in Australian children.
Method
N = 171,052 Australian students (8–18 years of age; 0.3% gender diverse, 48.4% male and 51.3% females) completed the CHS as part of a larger survey examining resilience. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, and internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach’s alpha.
Results
Bifactor modelling indicated a single-factor structure for the CHS, and the scale demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .86) and was sensitive to age and gender differences.
Conclusions
Our results suggest that the CHS is unidimensional and supports its use for the measurement of hope in children and adolescents aged 8–18 years of age.
Key Points
What is already known about this topic
(1) Hope is a powerful protective factor in children.
(2) The Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) is widely used to assess hope in older children and adolescents.
(3) There is debate as to whether the CHS is a unidimensional or two-dimensional scale.
What this topic adds
(1) The CHS is a unidimensional scale.
(2) The CHS can be reliably used in children as young as 8 years of age.
(3) It is validated for use in Australian children.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from https://resilientyouth.org/. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for this study.