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.
Highlights
The concept of hope has received increasing attention in recent years from various perspectives, including psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, religion, and mythology, among others
We focus on determining whether the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) exhibits measurement invariance across socioeconomic status (SES)
The results show that these characteristics differ significantly between the two groups in the current sample with the higher Socioeconomic status (SES) group reported higher agency scores, pathways scores, and total scores than the lower SES group (Agency: p < 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.14; pathways: p < 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.20; total: p < 0.01, Cohen’s d = 0.19)
Summary
The concept of hope has received increasing attention in recent years from various perspectives, including psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, religion, and mythology, among others. Snyder et al (1991a) defined hope as “goal-directed thinking in which the person has the perceived capacity to find routes. Hope Across Socioeconomic Status to goals (pathways thinking) and the motivation to use those routes (agency thinking).”. They proposed the hope model, which included three distinct components: goals (providing the target of mental action sequences, which need to be of sufficient value to occupy conscious thought), pathways (signifying one’s perceived ability at generating workable routes to desired goals), and agency (the perceived ability to use one’s pathways to achieve desired goals) (Snyder et al, 2002, 2003) Hope Across Socioeconomic Status to goals (pathways thinking) and the motivation to use those routes (agency thinking).” They proposed the hope model, which included three distinct components: goals (providing the target of mental action sequences, which need to be of sufficient value to occupy conscious thought), pathways (signifying one’s perceived ability at generating workable routes to desired goals), and agency (the perceived ability to use one’s pathways to achieve desired goals) (Snyder et al, 2002, 2003)
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