The Urban Adolescents Hope Scale: Examining Factor Structure and Validity

Background: This study examined the factor of the Urban Adolescent Hope Scale with a sample of impoverished urban high school students. Much research on and measuring hope often do not include the perceptions of impoverished, urban adolescents. This scale was developed from qualitative work examining how this population perceives hope. Ideally, developing a quantitative scale from themes arising in a qualitative study would create a culturally competent scale.

Methods: A purposive sample of 297 high school students were sampled during a school-wide needs assessment. Participants were on average 16.1 (SD=1.373) years old and evenly split across gender, with females making up the majority (52.9%). The sample was also evenly distributed across grade levels: ninth (26.3%), tenth (21.2%), eleventh (31.3%), and twelfth (20.9%).

Because the measure was developed on the themes and language used in a qualitative study, we had an a priori factor structure in mind and thus, used a confirmatory factor analysis. We proposed a five-factor structure of hope made up of belief in a higher power, outlook, neighborhood, education, and supportive others, each a dominant theme of the qualitative study. To examine model fit, we used CFI, TLI, RMSEA, SRMR, and X²/df ratio. To measure reliability, we used Chronbach’s alpha.

Results: The measure had acceptable levels of internal consistency: belief in a higher power (α=.936), outlook (α=.930)., neighborhood (α=..936), education (α=.921)., and supportive others (α=.875). In addition, the five-factor structure had appropriate model fit: CFI=.97; TLI=.96; RMSEA=.094; SRMR=.074; X²/df ratio=3.242). The findings indicate that a five-factor structure appropriately measures hope as perceived by impoverished urban youth.

Implications: These findings indicate that impoverished urban youth may perceive hope slightly differently than what is usually conceptualized in the literature. A culturally-competent valid and reliable of measure of hope for this population can be an extremely valuable tool to social work practice with this population. Further validation studies are needed to ensure the Urban Adolescent Hope Scale maintains acceptable and appropriate levels of reliability and factorial validity. Future studies should also compare scores form this measure to other hope scales already in use. In addition, future research should focus on scale scoring and interpretation. As it stands now, higher scores of this scale indicate higher levels of hope or a subconstruct, but the clinical meaning behind the scores needs to be developed. Finally, this study addresses an interesting next step for mixed-methods research. This study is completely informed by qualitative findings. This study was successful in taking the dominant themes found in qualitative findings and creating a culturally competent and quantifiable measure. Hope is an important aspect of adolescents’ lives, and ensuring that it is measured in a way that is organic to this population is important to future practice and research.