DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE STATE HOPE SCALE

Defining hope as a cognitive set comprising agency (belief in one's ca pacity to initiate and sustain actions) and pathways( belief in one's capacity to generate routes) to reach goals, the Hope Scale was develo ped and validated previously as a dispositional self-report measure of hope (Snyder et al., 1991). The present 4 studies were designed to de velop and validate a measure of state hope. The 6-item State Hope Scal e is internally consistent and reflects the theorized agency and pathw ays components. The relationships of the State Hope Scale to other mea sures demonstrate concurrent and discriminant validity; moreover, the scale is responsive to events in the lives of people as evidenced by d ata gathered through both correlational and causal designs. The State Hope Scale offers a brief, internally consistent, and valid self-repor t measure of ongoing goal-directed thinking that may be useful to rese archers and applied professionals.