Measuring hope: psychometric properties of the children’s Hope Scale among South Sudanese refugee children
This study investigated the psychometric properties among a sample of 1,118 South Sudanese refugee children in Uganda.
Abstract
Hope deserves attention in creating and enhancing resilience. It can mitigate the negative effects of trauma and adversity through ones ability to develop pathways towards reaching goals and apply agency to these discovered pathways. The use of validated measures of hope provides opportunities for practitioners to design and implement effective programmes for children that bolster different learning strategies that can be used to build hope and sustain its effects. The Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) is one such measure.
Using data from the randomised control trial of Child-friendly spaces, this study investigated the psychometric properties of the Children’s Hope Scale among a sample of 1,118 South Sudanese refugee children (aged 9 to 14) in Uganda. Evidence from this study supports the use of a unidimensional model of hopefulness across groups and signifies the importance of confirming these properties for measures used to evaluate humanitarian interventions. Implications of these findings include the continued use of the Children’s Hope Scale and valid appraisal of the level of hopefulness amongst crisis-affected girls and boys from middle childhood to early adolescence.
This research was supported by the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme.
Citation
Metzler, J., Zhang, Y., Saw, T. and others. ‘Measuring hope: psychometric properties of the children’s Hope Scale among South Sudanese refugee children’. Child Psychiatry and Human Development 2023: volume 54, pages 1452–1458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-022-01327-6