Scale of hope and hopelessness for adolescents: some aspects of validity

Context and relevance. In modern psychology, there is a growing interest in the emotions of hope, hopelessness, optimism and pessimism. There is a shortage of diagnostic tools that can measure positive and negative emotions as relatively independent of each other (two-dimensional scales), while most existing techniques are one-dimensional. This limits the ability to obtain complete information about the emotional state of the subject, including the overall emotional activation and levels of experience of each emotion separately. Purpose. Testing the convergent and discriminant aspects of validity of the two-dimensional version of A. Beck's Hopelessness Scale (Hope and Hopelessness Scale) in the adolescent age group. Hypothesis. The structure of A. Beck's Hopelessness Scale in the case of adolescents may not be one-dimensional, but two-dimensional (consisting of relatively independent measurements of hope and hopelessness). Methods and materials. Sample: 178 students of grades VII - VIII from one of the cities of Poland (104 girls and 74 boys) aged 13-15 years (M = 13.89; SD=0,68). Subject of the study: a two-dimensional version of the scale of hope and hopelessness (created on the basis of the A. Beck scale). Comparative methods: Polish versions of the M. Rosenberg scale (subscales of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with oneself), the modified STAI scale by C.D. Spielberger (subscales of anxiety and joy) and the affective balance scale by N.M. Bradburn (subscales of positive and negative emotions). Control Tool: Y. Chapinsky Social Approval Aspiration Scale. Methods of analysis: exploratory factor analysis (method of main components, rotation of OBLIMIN), confirmatory factor analysis (comparison of one-factor and two-factor models), correlation analysis. Results. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the advantage of a two-factor model over a one-factor model: in the structure of the emotional sphere of adolescents, hope and hopelessness appear as relatively independent measurements (r = -0.26). When compared with other scales (Rosenberg, Spielberger, Bradburn), the two-factor model showed significantly better statistical parameters than the one-factor one. Convergent and discriminant analyses showed that the indicator of hope correlates more strongly with the indices of positive emotions, and the indicator of hopelessness with the indices of negative emotions of other methods. Cronbach's alpha reliability factors were 0.86 for the hopelessness subscale and 0.77 for the hope subscale. The impact of social approval factors on the results was not significant (r = 0.15 for hope and r = -0.14 for hopelessness). The level of hope in the sample was significantly higher than the level of hopelessness, with no gender differences found. Conclusion. The two-dimensional version of A. Beck's scale of hope and hopelessness has a high level of convergent and discriminant validity for adolescents. Hope and hopelessness in a given age group are relatively independent emotional dimensions. The use of this scale in a two-dimensional version is justified and can be useful for psychologists and teachers to diagnose personal problems and difficulties in the educational and other activities of adolescents.