Development and Validation of the Climate Change Hope Scale for High School Students

Hope is an important component that helps engage people in solving problems. The development of an instructional model on climate change and forests provided an opportunity to design and test a measurement tool to assess hope about climate change. In this article, we described the process and determined the reliability and validity of a newly developed 11-item Climate Change Hope Scale (CCHS). The study involved high school students from the southeastern United States during fall of 2013 and spring of 2015 (N = 1,902, 14-18 years old). The factor analysis confirmed a three-factor solution with good model fit: (a) collective-sphere willpower and waypower, (b) personal-sphere willpower and waypower, and (c) lack of willpower and waypower. This study suggests that the CCHS is a valid, reliable, and feasible tool to measure hope in the context of climate change among U.S. high school students.