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Adult Dispositional Hope Scale

AHS
psychologyeducationsocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 12-item measure of dispositional hope (8 scored items plus 4 fillers) comprising agency (goal-directed determination) and pathways, the perceived ability to plan routes to goals.

Items
12
Response format
4-point Likert in the original; 8-point in many later administrations
Version
1.0
Subscales
2

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Dispositional hope was measured with the Adult Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991), whose 8 scored items across the agency and pathways subscales showed acceptable to good internal consistency (total-scale α = .74 to .84 across the original samples).

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Reliability & validation

Validation population
College students and people in psychological treatment (Snyder et al., 1991)
Test–retest
0.73–0.85
Cronbach's α
0.74–0.84

Subscales

AgencyPathways

Response anchors

Definitely false · Mostly false · Mostly true · Definitely true

Known limitations

Only 8 of the 12 items are scored; the two 4-item subscales are highly correlated and less reliable alone than the total, and response formats differ across published versions (4- vs 8-point).

Original citation

Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., Yoshinobu, L., Gibb, J., Langelle, C., & Harney, P. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570-585.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570

Questions researchers ask

What does the AHS measure?

A 12-item measure of dispositional hope (8 scored items plus 4 fillers) comprising agency (goal-directed determination) and pathways, the perceived ability to plan routes to goals.

How many items does the AHS have?

The Adult Dispositional Hope Scale (AHS) has 12 items across 2 subscales: Agency, Pathways.

Is the AHS free to use?

The AHS is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the AHS reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.74–0.84, test–retest reliability of 0.73–0.85. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the AHS, and how do I cite it?

Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., Yoshinobu, L., Gibb, J., Langelle, C., & Harney, P. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(4), 570-585. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570

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AMS-C 28Academic Motivation Scale — College VersionBFI-44Big Five InventoryBSCSBrief Self-Control ScaleGrit-SShort Grit ScaleNFC-SFNeed for Cognition Scale (Short Form)AEQAchievement Emotions Questionnaire

Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.