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Adaptation and Validationof the Brazilian Versionof the Hope IndexJuliana Cerentini Pacico a , Cristian Zanon a ,Micheline Roat Bastianello a , Caroline Tozzi Reppoldb & Claudio Simon Hutz aa Department of Psychology , Federal University ofRio Grande do Sul , Brazilb Department of Psychology , Federal University ofHealth Sciences of Porto Alegre , BrazilPublished online: 31 May 2013.
To cite this article: Juliana Cerentini Pacico , Cristian Zanon , Micheline RoatBastianello , Caroline Tozzi Reppold & Claudio Simon Hutz (2013) Adaptation andValidation of the Brazilian Version of the Hope Index, International Journal of Testing,13:3, 193-200, DOI: 10.1080/15305058.2012.664833
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15305058.2012.664833
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International Journal of Testing, 13: 193–200, 2013Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1530-5058 print / 1532-7574 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15305058.2012.664833
Adaptation and Validationof the Brazilian Version
of the Hope Index
Juliana Cerentini Pacico, Cristian Zanon, and Micheline RoatBastianello
Department of Psychology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Caroline Tozzi ReppoldDepartment of Psychology, Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto
Alegre, Brazil
Claudio Simon HutzDepartment of Psychology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
The objective of this study was to adapt and gather validity evidence for a Braziliansample version of the Hope Index and to verify if cultural differences would producedifferent results than those found in the United States. In this study, we presenta set of analyses that together comprise a comprehensive validity argument forthe use of a test in a new language or culture. Participants were 844 undergraduateBrazilian students (mean age 21.3 years). A content validity study suggested that newitems could be added to the scale. Factor analyses extracted two factors replicatingthe original instrument structure. The internal consistency was adequate with andwithout the added items. The results illustrate how different validation procedurescan be used to support the use of an adapted version of a test, suggesting that inBrazil, researchers may choose the original adapted version (16 items) or the moreemic version (21 items) depending on the objectives of their study. The indicationthat the Hope Index is valid in a Brazilian sample strengthens the idea that thisconstruct may be universal. The results also stress the importance of conductingcontent validity studies as part of a cross-cultural adaptation of a test.
Keywords: hope, positive psychology, test adaptation, validity
This work was supported by CNPq and CAPES Foundation. The authors want to thank ProfessorThomas Oakland for his contributions to this article and also the reviewers who gave suggestions thatimproved very much the quality of this manuscript.
This article was accepted under the previous co-editor team, Rob R. Meijer and Stephen G. Sireci.Correspondence should be sent to Cristian Zanon, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul,
Ramiro Barcelos, 2600/101, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]
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194 PACICO ET AL.
The construct of Hope was defined by Staats (1989) as a future event that is wishedfor by the individual combined with positive affect and cognitive perception of itsprobability of occurrence. Therefore, hope contains an affective component and acognitive component. Staats suggested hope be divided into a cognitive dimensionand an emotional dimension. The emotional component can be measured by theExpected Balance Scale, which was modeled after Bradburn’s Affective BalanceScale (Staats, 1989). The cognitive component of hope was originally assessedusing the Hope Index (Staats, 1987).
The Hope Index was based on Beck’s theory of depression (Staats, 1989) and,although it has an associated affective component, it is focused on the cognitive di-mension of hope. Staats’ scale has 16 items divided into two subscales: hope-selfand hope-other. The hope-self subscale contains self-reporting items includingstatements that express the individual’s wishes and expectations regarding him-self/herself (to be competent; to do well in school, in job, or in daily tasks). Thehope-other subscale contains items expressing wishes and expectations related toothers and to global circumstances (other people to be helpful, peace in the world).The objective of the present study was to adapt and gather validity evidence forthe Hope Index for the Brazilian adult population and to verify if the results foundin southern Brazil would be similar to those found by Staats in the United Stateswith this scale.
The internationalization of psychology is expanding around the world and thereis an increasing interest in cross-cultural research (Bontempo, 1993; Brehm, 2007).Bontempo (1993) argued that it is essential for the progress of the psychologicalscience to have equivalent psychological tests that allow adequate comparisonsamong countries, cultures, and regions. To achieve this equivalence, tests shouldbe adapted according to specific rules (as the International Test Commission’sGuidelines, 2010). Examples with descriptions of the procedures involved on theadaptation might be useful to researchers to implement this process. In this context,we believe that content validity studies are an important step of test adaptationand might contribute to cross-cultural test adaptation methodology.
Therefore, a content validity study was conducted in order to verify if the sametopics present in the U.S. version of the Hope scale would also appear amongBrazilian university students. If Staats results can be replicated, the present studywill give a contribution to the validity of her scale to measure hope in differentcultures.
Defining “Hope”
The Hope Index has been used to relate cognitive hope to other positive aspects ofdevelopment. Hope is associated with psychological adjustment (Edwards, Rand,Lopez, & Snyder, 2006), optimism (Pacico, Bastianello, Zanon, Reppold, & Hutz,in press), self-esteem (Hutz & Zanon, 2011), and higher athletic and academic
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BRAZILIAN VERSION OF THE HOPE INDEX 195
performance (Ciarrochi, Heaven, & Davies, 2007). High scores on satisfactionwith life also seem to be directly related to hope (Valle, Huebner, & Suldo, 2006).
In addition, hope also has an impact on important life aspects such as workand marital relationships. It was demonstrated that hope is correlated with highjob performance (Peterson & Byron, 2007). These authors evaluated the impactof hope on job performance using three samples of employees of different joblevels and industries. Employees with higher hope scores suggested more andbetter solutions to work-related problems. The explanation for this finding is thatthe cognitive processes underlying hope promote better performance because theindividual has clear goals and is able to develop different strategies to achieve suchgoals. Peterson and Byron (2007) also found that teams with high hope managersare more productive.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 844 undergraduate students from two public universities inSouthern Brazil. Of these, 42.6% were male and 57.4% were female. The agerange was from 17 to 36 years (M = 21.3, SD = 3.5). A convenience sample wasused and students’ participation was voluntary. Another 60 students participatedin a qualitative content validity study. Their mean age was 35.6 (SD = 12), and50% were male.
Instrument
The Staats’ scale has 16 items that are scored in two and 0-to-5 points Likert scales.In the first scale, the participants indicate how much they wish the occurrence ofthe situations suggested by the item (0 indicates not at all, and 5 indicates verymuch). In the second scale, the participants indicate how likely they expect thesituations described in the item to occur. Therefore, each item has two scores:one for how much the participant desires the situation described in the item, andthe other for how much they expect that the situation will occur. The scores aremultiplied and added up to produce the global score of cognitive hope. The originalscale (Staats & Stassen, 1986) presented an internal consistency (alpha coefficient)of .86.
Validation Procedures
In the original content validity study (Staats & Stassen, 1986), 234 students fromintroductory classes in Psychology were asked to list the circumstances or thingsthey would hope to achieve. They were also asked to take to their parents a
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196 PACICO ET AL.
sheet with the phrase “I hope . . . ” to complete the sentence. This step had 303noncollege adults (their parents). The responses of the two groups formed an initialset of items. Those that appeared most frequently were selected for the scale.
To verify if the items in the original scale would also be representative ofBrazilian wishes, a content validity study was conducted. Initially, students wereasked to write down the things they most hoped for. Similar answers were clusteredin categories. Data collection was done until no new answers were found. Thisprocedure was described by Berg (2001) and is known as saturation. When the samecategories started to repeat themselves and the responses become redundant, theprocedure was stopped. It required the participation of 60 students until saturationwas reached. These participants were selected by convenience from a populationsimilar to the target population.
Although this procedure is not, by itself, enough to guarantee content validityfor the scale, it does provide information in this regard. Despite slightly differentfrom the American qualitative study, both methods might be useful to collectevidences of content validity.
Translation and Adaptation Procedures. The items of the original in-strument were translated by one bilingual faculty with academic background inpsychology and familiar with the construct of hope. The translator was instructedto emphasize the conceptual similarity of the items during the process of trans-lating, instead of focusing on literal similarities. This procedure can maximizethe equivalence between the original and the adapted version (Jeanrie & Bertrand,1999).
The translation was reviewed by two of the authors who have Portuguese asfirst language, are fluent in English, and have psychometric background. Alongwith the translator, the reviewers did some adjustments on the sentences to makethem closer to the Brazilian Portuguese spoken language. Two items had theircontents slightly changed. Following the D.2 recommendation of the InternationalTest Commission’s Guidelines (2010) that states that “Test developers/publishersshould provide evidence that the language use in the directions, rubrics, and itemsthemselves as well as in the handbook are appropriate for all cultural and languagepopulations for whom the test or instrument is intended”; we preferred to keepthese two items with some change in content because they make more sense inPortuguese. The original item (to have money) has two meanings in Portuguese.The first one means to have money at the moment (situational perspective), and thesecond meaning is related to financial security (stable perspective). Because theidea is not just to have money but to access the expectation of a secure monetarysituation, the item was adapted to “To have money/financial security.” The otheritem (resources for all) was adapted to “To have good conditions of life to all”because the term “resources” in Portuguese does not have the meaning of essentialthings to everyone’s life.
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BRAZILIAN VERSION OF THE HOPE INDEX 197
The adapted version was back-translated twice and independently by two bilin-gual psychologists familiar with the construct of hope. Both versions were com-pared with each other and finally compared with the original version by an Englishnative speaker. No significant changes were found (except for those two items thatwere changed) and the content of the Brazilian and U.S. versions were preserved.Despite the fact that similarities between the original and the back-translatedversion do not guarantee the quality of the adaptation, they provide evidence oftranslation equivalence (van de Vijver & Hambleton, 1996). Finally, a pilot sample,with the same characteristics of the sample of the main study, completed the scaleto check the adequacy of the 21 items and the instructions on how to complete theinstrument.
Data Collection Procedures
The instrument was administered in the classroom to groups of students by tworesearchers. After being informed about the objectives and importance of thestudy, participants were also told that participation was voluntary, anonymous,and confidential. There were no refusals to participate in the study. Data collectionwas performed in one single session that lasted approximately 20 minutes.
RESULTS
Regarding the qualitative study, the response categories based on Brazilian stu-dents’ wishes contemplated all items in the Hope Index. However, five additionalcategories (not represented by items from the Hope Index) were found. Thesecategories were to have a good relationship, travel to different places/new places,to have more sexual satisfaction, to have children succeed in life, and to be ableto help people in need. These results suggested the need for adding new itemson the scale. All the original items of the scale were included in the Brazilianversion because they represented categories of wishes that were also expressed bythe Brazilian sample.
The Hope Index underwent principal axis factor analysis using Oblimin rotationwith the 21 items and the 16 original items. In both cases, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkinindex was adequate and Bartlett’s sphericity test was significant. Both analysesshowed results that indicated that the extraction of two factors, “hope-self” and“hope-other,” was the most appropriate solution. The five new items loaded in thehope-self factor. All items had positive factor loadings between .30 and .88 in theexpected dimension and loadings lower than .30 in the other dimension.1 The cor-relations between “hope-self” and “hope-other” were .54 for the 16-item versionand .56 for the 21-item version. Alpha coefficients were similar for both scalesand are presented in Table 1. Means, standard deviations, internal consistency,and other psychometric characteristics of the 16- and the 21-item scales are also
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198 PACICO ET AL.
TABLE 1Psychometric Characteristics of the Hope Index With 16 and 21 Items
16-Item Version 21-Item Version
Hope-Self Hope-Other Hope-Self Hope-Other
Number of items 10 6 15 6M (SD) 189.8 (33.4) 72.8 (28.7) 285.1 (50.9) 72.8 (28.7)Alpha coefficient .79 .80 .86 .80Eigenvalue and VAF 5.1 (32.1%) 1.8 (11.6%) 6.6 (31.4%) 2.0 (9.5%)
VAF = Variance accounted for by the factor; M (SD) = Mean and standard deviation.
presented in Table 1. The alpha coefficient for the global score for the scale with16 items was .85 and for the 21 items was .89.
Women had a higher mean in hope-self (M = 277.9, SD = 42.0) than men(M = 258.7, SD = 52.6), t (411) = 2.5, p < .02, d = 0.4. The “d” is an estimationof effect size and it represents a percentage of a pooled standard deviation of bothsamples (Cohen, 1988). No significant sex difference was found in the hope-othersubscale.
DISCUSSION
The results showed that the 16 original items of the Hope Index express wishesand expectations that are similar in the U.S. and in the Brazilian cultures eventhough the sample in the present study was composed of college students. Theyappeared in the content validity studies done by Staats and in our sample andthey loaded in the expected factors when submitted to factor analyses. However,the Brazilians in our sample presented wishes that were not present among thosedescribed by Staats’ subjects. These wishes or expectations were included asfive new items in the revised scale: (1) to have a good romantic relationship;(2) to have more sexual satisfaction; (3) to have children who will succeed inlife; (4) to be able to help needy people; and (5) to travel to different or unusualplaces. It must be pointed out that the sample of this study is not representative ofthe Brazilian population and, therefore, such a finding cannot be generalized forBrazilians at this point. However, this finding is important because it shows that itis not enough to translate and adapt an instrument. The resulting scale may evenhave appropriate psychometric characteristics, like this one with its 16 originalitems but some facets of the construct may be more relevant or stronger in a cultureor in a specific region than in others. This helps to understand better the nature ofthe construct under study.
In conclusion, both the 16- and the 21-item scale can be used with Brazilianadults, considering, however, that the sample in the study was composed by col-lege students, our content validity study did not include student’s parents and theresults with older adults may be different. However, the 21-item scale seems more
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BRAZILIAN VERSION OF THE HOPE INDEX 199
appropriate because it reflects more accurately the wishes of the researched pop-ulation and because of the results of the confirmatory factor analyses. Althoughthe new items do not contribute to increase the amount of explained variance theydo increase the internal consistency of the scale (coefficient alpha increases from.79 to .86). If the purpose of research is to conduct cross-cultural studies or tocompare results with those produced by research carried out in other countries,the 16-item version may be more appropriate. But, if the interest is to investigatespecific characteristics of the Brazilian population and the relationship betweencognitive hope and other variables in this population the 21-item version is proba-bly more appropriate because it more precisely reflects the wishes and expectationsof Brazilians. Although the global score with 16 or 21 items has good internalconsistency and it has been used by Staats (1989), it should be noted that eachfactor measures a different construct and might be better to use them separatelyinstead of using the global score in studies about hope.
Perhaps one of the most important findings of this study is the demonstrationthat when scales developed for a country, like the United States, are adapted andvalidated to another (like Brazil) and only the usual steps to assess constructvalidity are taken, important information can be lost. In the present study, if theoriginal items had been translated and factor analyzed, the results would indicatea valid scale. However, the procedure of doing a very simple and preliminarycontent validity analysis of the scale showed that even though the original itemswere indeed representative of wishes of the Brazilians represented by our sample,they were not a representative sample of Brazilian wishes. Further studies relatinghope to other constructs will be needed to determine the importance of these extraitems, but the main point is that whenever possible, content validity studies shouldbe conducted when making cross-cultural adaptations of tests.
Finally, it must be pointed out that the present study has limitations that must betaken into account before generalizing its results. The first important limitation isthe sample, which consists of university students. New studies must be conductedwith older adults, working people, and people from other social classes. Also, itmust be taken into account that Brazil is a continental country and its differentregions are not represented in the sample. New studies may show that people fromdifferent regions may have different wishes and aspirations.
NOTE
1. Confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted with both versions, using LISREL(Maximum Likelihood) as an extra check on the two-dimensional structure of the HopeIndex. The 16-item version presented χ 2(103) = 579.5, p < .001, root mean square error ofapproximation (RMSEA) = .08 (90% CI .07–.08), standardized root mean square residual(SRMR) = .07, and comparative fit index (CFI) = .94. The 21-item version presentedχ 2(188) = 886.3, p < .001, RMSEA = .07 (90% CI .06–.07), SRMR = .07, and CFI =.95. These results suggest acceptable fit for both versions (Hu & Bentler, 1999).
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