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A Reliability Generalization on the Children’s Hope Scale

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Abstract

The Children’s Hope Scale is one of the most commonly used self-report measures of a child’s future oriented goal motivation. This study presents a reliability generalization on both the internal consistency and test-retest reliability estimates for the Children’s Hope Scale. While 225 published works were analyzed 4.2% authors did not report reliability estimates for their study and 10.7% induced from a previous study. The average internal consistency score (N = 164) was .81 (95% CI = .79 -- .82) and the test-retest (N = 15) at .71 (95% CI = .64 -- .78) respectively. An analysis of variance showed that non-English language samples produced moderately lower (albeit still acceptable) Cronbach’s Alpha estimates. The results of the reliability generalization suggest the score reliabilities produced by the Children’s Hope Scale are acceptable across samples. The findings of this study paired with the growing number of validation studies suggest researchers can use of the Children’s Hope Scale with increased confidence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Relations, University of Oklahoma - Tulsa, 4502 East 41st Street, Tulsa, OK, 74135, USA

    Chan M. Hellman & Jody A. Worley

  2. Center of Applied Research for Nonprofit Organizations, University of Oklahoma, 4502 East 41st Street, Tulsa, OK, 74135, USA

    Chan M. Hellman, Ricky T. Munoz, Jody A. Worley, Jessica A. Feeley & Jeanne E. Gillert

  3. Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, University of Oklahoma, 4502 East 41st Street, Tulsa, OK, 74135, USA

    Ricky T. Munoz & Jessica A. Feeley

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  1. Chan M. Hellman
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  2. Ricky T. Munoz
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Correspondence to Chan M. Hellman.

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Hellman, C.M., Munoz, R.T., Worley, J.A. et al. A Reliability Generalization on the Children’s Hope Scale. Child Ind Res 11, 1193–1200 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-017-9467-6

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