Hope Across Socioeconomic Status: Examining Measurement Invariance of the Children’s Hope Scale Across Socioeconomic Status Groups

Abstract

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.

Development and Validation of the Career and Life Development Hope (CLDH) Scale among Non-Engaged Youth in Hong Kong

“…Moreover, our findings from the EFA show that the final two-factor solution of the 20 items on the CLDH scale accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in NEY’s hope for career and life development. In this connection, this study complements existing studies [ 34 ] by confirming that the two key components (i.e., pathways and agency) suggested in Snyder’s [ 15 ] hope model are inclusive and applicable in the context of CLDH among NEY. In addition, this study also demonstrated the good concurrent validity and subgroup consistency of the CLDH scale, both seldom examined in relevant validation studies, and confirmed that the newly developed scale is valid and stable across gender, age, and residence-year subsamples.…”

“…The concept of hope has received increased attention in youth studies in recent years. Scholars attempt to conceptualize and measure hope to better understand its influence on the development of young people [ 34 ]. According to hope theory, hope in young people consists of a motivational–cognitive–behavioral state involving self-related appraisals about one’s abilities to produce workable routes to goals (the pathways component), as well as initiating and maintaining movement toward those goals (the agency component) [ 15 , 22 , 35 ].…”

Children’s Hope in South Africa: A Population-Based Study

“…Along with the considerable reflection and engagement concerning conceptual definitions of hope, there has been an increasing investment in empirical studies exploring children's hope using the CHS (Snyder et al, 1997(Snyder et al, , 2005 across various contexts. Within low and middle-income contexts, the work of Atik and Kemer (2009) in Turkey; Savahl et al (2016), and Guse et al (2016) in South Africa; Haroz et al (2017) in Burundi, Indonesia, and Nepal;Wai et al (2014) in Malaysia; Jovanoviae (2013) in Serbia; and Lei et al (2019) in China, have made substantial contributions to the literature on children's hope. In high-income contexts, the empirical work of Ciarrochi et al (2007Ciarrochi et al ( , 2015 Valle et al (2004Valle et al ( , 2006 in the United States of America; Marques et al (2009Marques et al ( , 2014 in Portugal; Pulido-Martos et al (2014) in Spain; and Wong and Lim (2009) in Singapore, are noteworthy.…”

“…While the focus of early research was on the validation of the CHS in various contexts, more recently the focus has shifted toward group comparisons and measurement invariance testing. For example, Lei et al (2019) and Savahl et al (2016) tested the measurement invariance of the CHS across socioeconomic status groups, while Haroz et al (2017) conducted group comparisons on samples of children in Burundi, Indonesia, and Nepal. Another recent trend in research is the relation of children's hope with other psychological constructs such as quality of life (Martins et al, 2018), life satisfaction (Merkaš and Brajša-Žganec, 2011;Raats et al, 2018), and subjective well-being (Kaye-Tzadok et al, 2018).…”

Silent but Damaging: Exploring the Link Between Air Pollution and Vocational and General Well-Being

“…Because different measurements may affect the study results, future research could measure family SES in alternative ways and replicate the findings of this study. For example, parents’ education level or individuals’ perceptions about their family SES could be considered for future studies (e.g., Lei et al, 2019; Pavela, 2017). In addition, state optimism was considered in this study as a general well-being variable.…”