Measuring hope: psychometric properties of the children’s Hope Scale among South Sudanese refugee children

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 R2HC-funded RCT 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 9-14) 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.