An analysis of hope as a psychological strength
Section snippets
Participants
The participants at Time 1 (Fall 2001) consisted of students from three public middle schools and two public high schools from a rural school district in a southeastern state. All students enrolled in the participating schools were invited to participate in the study through a letter that described the research and requested permission for student participation. The rate of students returning parent consent forms varied from 28% to 32% by school, a proportion typical in studies that have
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and internal consistency coefficients of all variables assessed at Time 1 and 1 year later at Time 2. Means and standard deviations for CHS scores at both Time 1 and Time 2 of the current study were higher than the majority of the eight samples reported in the initial validation studies (M = 25.41–27.03; SD = 3.01–6.11) (Snyder et al., 1997, Snyder et al., 1997).
T-tests were employed to determine the significance of the differences between hope scores
Discussion
This study represents an analysis of the cognitive-motivational construct of hope as a psychological strength in adolescents. Three findings were most notable. First, adolescents' CHS scores showed moderate test–retest reliability over a 1-year period. This supports the theoretical premise that hope demonstrates some trait-like properties. The longitudinal design of this study, in which hope scores were reassessed after a 1-year period, is a significant increase in comparison to previous
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the staff and students in Sumter School District II for their assistance in the research.
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