Adolescent hope and optimism: A scoping review of measures and their psychometric properties

Abstract

There is much research examining adolescent hope and optimism, but there is limited information on the available measures, particularly the most frequently used measures and their psychometric properties. We conducted a scoping review to: (1) identify measures of hope and optimism for use among adolescents; (2) determine the most frequently used measures of adolescent hope and optimism; (3) document the psychometric properties of the identified measures. We searched five bibliographic databases and Open Grey for relevant articles published from database inception to 03 May 2023. The search included the key terms ‘adolescents’, ‘optimism’, ‘hope’ and ‘measures’. We targeted adolescents aged 10–19 years without country or gender restrictions. We identified 86 measures of optimism and 64 measures of hope for use among adolescents from 803 eligible studies. Most of the included studies (n = 341, 42.5%) originated from North America. We identified 22 most frequently used measures used across 603 (75.1%) of the included studies, with 509 (84.4%) of them providing their psychometric properties. The reported validity of the tools included face, content, construct, criterion, convergent, discriminant, predictive validity and measurement invariance. There are several measures of adolescent hope and optimism. The most frequently used measures of these constructs demonstrated sound psychometric properties, especially reliability. However, most of the evidence originates from high-income countries. There is a need for development, cross-cultural adaptation and validation of these tools to other settings.

Contribution: Hope and optimism are character strengths that have been consistently linked to positive health outcomes in adolescents. Based on increasing research on adolescent hope and optimism, there have been measures developed to assess these constructs but there is no study summarising the available measures, particularly regarding the most frequently used measures and their reliability and validity across contexts. This study aimed at filling this gap. Information on this will be useful to various stakeholders to make evidence-informed choice on selection of the most relevant instrument for use in adolescents in their contexts.