Poster #125 - Measurement Invariance in the Children’s Hope Scale

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Methods, History, Theory

Integrative Statement

Hope is a positive and malleable strength that promotes human thriving. As a cognitive-motivational construct, hope involves harnessing resources, within the self and the environment to attain goals (Callina, Snow, & Murray, 2017). Hope has been related to a variety of positive outcomes including educational achievement, athletic performance, and positive youth development, as well as decreases in negative health outcomes (Lopez et al., 2009; Lerner et al., 2005; Weis & Speridakos, 2011). To date, hope has been primarily measured using Snyder’s (1997) Children’s Hope Scale (CHS). Although widely used, psychometric support for the use of the CHS has primarily relied on upper and middle-SES samples, leaving little empirical understanding of whether the CHS operates the same in lower-SES samples (Tennen, Affleck, & Tennen, 2002). Researchers argue that testing for measurement invariance is a best practice, particularly when studying marginalized groups (e.g., lower-SES students) (Knight, Roosa, and Umaña-Taylor, 2009). To address this gap, we examined measurement invariance in the CHS for youth who do or do not qualify for free and reduced lunch, using free and reduced lunch as a proxy for SES.
Participants were 639 fifth- through twelfth-grade students (47.6% female) in a rural county in the southwestern United States, of whom 55.7% identified as White, 40.1% as Hispanic, 2.7% as African American, and 1.6% as Asian American, Native American, or Alaskan Native. Over half (56.5%) of students qualified for free and reduced lunch. Students completed an online survey as part of the school district’s data collection, which included the 6-item CHS (using a 5-point scale; 1=None of the time to 5=All of the time). Example items included “I can think of many ways to get the things in life that are most important to me” (pathways) and “I am doing just as well as other people my age” (agency).
Testing for measurement invariance between groups involves comparing increasingly constrained confirmatory factor analysis models, at each step testing to see if the additional constraints significantly diminished model, which would indicate that the measure is operating differently for the two groups (Thompson & Green, 2013). We first established a well-fitting baseline model for each group. In subsequent testing, we found evidence for configural invariance (constraining the structure of the model), metric invariance (constraining the factor loadings), and scalar invariance (constraining the intercepts). These findings imply that the meaning of the construct and item ratings (i.e., intercepts) are equal in both groups, suggesting the two groups can be compared on their latent variables scores (Van de Schoot, Lugtig, & Hox, 2012). As such, our findings suggest that youth from both lunch-status groups can be compared on CHS agency and pathways scores. Further, these findings provide empirical support for future work using the CHS with socioeconomically diverse samples.

Authors

• Brittany L Alexander, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Tashia Abry, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Richard A. Fabes, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Crystal Bryce, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author