There has been a growing interest in research on hope in recent years. The Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) is the most commonly used scale to evaluate goal-related hopeful thinking in children and adolescents. Socioeconomic status (SES) strongly influences an individual’s experiences from childhood and throughout adult life. This study aimed to evaluate the measurement invariance of the CHS across SES. The sample consisted of 1934 Chinese youths (50.4% females) with a mean age of 12.96 (SD = 2.686). An overall family SES score was obtained by totaling the Z scores for family monthly income and parents’ education level. The results supported the single-factor model as the baseline model across each SES group. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that full measurement invariance did not hold. One factor loading and one intercept were non-invariant. There were also significant differences in latent factor means and raw scores of the CHS across the two groups. The CHS had a stronger convergent validation in the higher SES group than lower SES group. The results suggest that researchers and practitioners should exercise caution when comparing differences in hope measured by the CHS between groups with different SES. We provide more robust statistical evidence in terms of SES differences, indicating that children and adolescents from higher SES backgrounds shower greater hopeful thinking compared with those from lower SES backgrounds.

Objective To study the developmental trajectory of hope among late‐adolescents, taking population heterogeneity and the impact of gender and family socioeconomic status (SES) into consideration. Methods The study used the Snyder Hope Scale to perform four surveys of a sample of 381 Chinese late‐adolescents, both male and female, with a mean age of 17.69 ± 1.12 years, over the course of one year, and employed a growth mixture model to perform data analysis. Results Although the levels of hope among the respondents who had high and moderate levels of hope at the outset of the study remained relatively stable over the course of the year, those with low levels of hope exhibited a significant decrease over time. Conclusions There is significant population heterogeneity in late‐adolescents' developmental trajectory of hope. Additionally, gender and family SES have a significant effect on the developmental trajectory of hope, as significantly more female students than male students reported high levels of hope. Furthermore, participants with high family SES outnumbered those with low family SES in the high‐hope group, whereas those with low SES outnumbered those with high SES in the low‐hope group.

General self-efficacy refers to global beliefs about one's capabilities across a variety of tasks or conditions. It is regarded as an important, relatively stable, motivational trait, and is associated with positive outcomes in a wide range of domains. The general self-efficacy scale (GSE) is the most commonly used measure to evaluate general selfefficacy among adults and youths. This study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of the GSE across age groups among adolescent and parent dyads, and to investigate the intergenerational parallelism of general self-efficacy and the moderating roles of parents' gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). Participants were 807 adolescent/parent dyads. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis revealed that full metric and scalar measurement invariance held. Regression analysis showed that parents' self-efficacy significantly predicted their children's self-efficacy (β = 0.232, p < 0.001). Multiple regression analysis indicated family SES played a moderating role (β = 0.066, p < 0.001), although parents' gender did not (β = −0.053, p = 0.288). The results demonstrated the GSE's measurement invariance across age, and further supported use of the GSE among adults and adolescents. Moreover, our findings provided evidence for the presence of this kind of intergenerational parallelism and the moderating role of family SES.