Development and testing an instrument of hope: The Hope Indicator Questionnaire.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument, the Hope Indicator Questionnaire (HIQ), which was designed to measure the latent variable of hope; and to identify antecedent variables which impact upon hope. A nonexperimental study with four-week test-retest was designed to examine the psychometric properties of the HIQ. Reliability of the HIQ was tested by 4-week stability. Internal consistency reliability was also performed on the HIQA. Validity of the HIQ was examined by content validity, exploratory factor analysis, convergence, and predictive causal model testing. Data were collected and analyzed from 111 subjects who did not have life threatening health problems during their study participation. Sixty (54%) were female, 83 (75%) were religious believers. The majority (66%) were Caucasian. The age ranged from 18 to 79, with the mean age of 38.95 (S.D. = 16.12). Results showed that low stabilities were found in the HIQP and HIQB (.52 and .45). Stability coefficient and internal consistency for the HIQA were .71 and .92. Satisfactory content validity of the HIQA was demonstrated by a three-member panel. The exploratory factor analysis confirmed that a latent factor was extracted from the three scales in the HIQ. Convergent validity was established by satisfactory correlations with the Herth Hope Scale (HHS) (.58) and Beck's Hopelessness Scale (HS) (-.42). The proposed predictive model was partially supported by the study when perceived functional support was measured by a modified Shang's Perceived Functional Support measure. Antecedents for both HIQ and HHS hope were explored. Personal control and perceived functional support were direct antecedents for HIQ hope while HHS hope was directly affected by personal control and chance control. Other variables (i.e. support network, religion and demographics) were indirect antecedents to HIQ and HHS hope through those direct antecedents. Additional analysis was accomplished on comparisons of the HIQ and HHS, and a qualitative content analysis was done on the first five hopes identified by the subjects. In conclusion, the HIQ had low reliability. Possible resources contributing to this low reliability were discussed. Results related to the HIQ measure should be interpreted with caution although the convergence of the HIQ with the HHS and HS was supported.