Children’s Hope Scale: factor structure and norms for Australian children aged 8–18 years

Abstract

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.