Gifted profiles of hope: Being hopeful is associated with a talent development psychosocial profile in gifted students

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, the relationship between clusters of hope and a psychosocial profile of academic talent development is examined in a sample of 466 academically gifted adolescents. First, cluster analysis is leveraged to examine whether interpretable three- and four-cluster hope solutions can be found in the sample. Second, differences among a group of psychosocial variables that predict academic talent development were examined to assess whether hope clusters were meaningfully related to different psychosocial profiles of academic talent development. This study had several notable findings: (a) an interpretable three-cluster hope solution was found with the hope clusters exhibiting meaningfully different profiles of academic talent development, (b) the high hope cluster reported the psychosocial profile most conducive to academic talent development, followed by the average hope cluster and the low hope cluster, respectively, and (c) this study did not find an interpretable four-cluster hope solution. These findings have implications for both academic talent development and hope theory.