Children’s Hope Scale: factor structure and norms for Australian children aged 8–18 years

The Children's Hope Scale (CHS) is a widely used six-item instrument for assessing hope in children. The CHS is thought to contain two dimensions-agency thinking (ability to initiate and sustain action towards goals) and pathways thinking (capacity to find a means to carry out goals)-but there is debate whether the scale is unidimensional rather than bidimensional and the factor structure has yet to be established in Australian children. N = 171,052 Australian students (8-18 years of age; 0.3% gender diverse, 48.4% male and 51.3% females) completed the CHS as part of a larger survey examining resilience. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, and internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach's alpha. Bifactor modelling indicated a single-factor structure for the CHS, and the scale demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = .86) and was sensitive to age and gender differences. Our results suggest that the CHS is unidimensional and supports its use for the measurement of hope in children and adolescents aged 8-18 years of age.