Assessing Hope in Student Veterans

Veterans are an increasing population in postsecondary education, and they experience challenges when they transition from the military to college (Elliott, Gonzalez, & Larsen, 2011). In order to improve understanding of adjustment to college life and the related stressors among the student veteran population, investigations are warranted to explore the impact of hope on this adjustment process. Hope has become a major focus in predicting both psychological and physical outcomes in children and adults (Chang & DeSimone, 2001), yet it has not been thoroughly examined as a protective factor for mental health in student veterans. Hope is defined as a positive state of mind based on the successful combination of agency (goal-directed efforts) and pathways (goal-directed plans; Snyder et al., 1991), and it is an attribute of positive psychology, a foundational term used to describe the study of positive emotion (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). Pathways thinking incorporates an individual's belief that one has the ability to create mental routes (pathways) to desired goals. Agency thinking identifies motivation or determination that an individual puts forth in order to successfully implement the selected pathways. Research shows a link between deficits in hope and psychopathology, which for purposes of our study can be understood as negative psychological outcomes (e.g., suicidal risks, depression, and anxiety; Chang, Yu, Kahle, Jeglic, & Hirsch, 2013). Hope has also been associated with positive adaptation to stress and life satisfaction in students (Bailey, Eng, Frisch, & Snyder, 2007; Chang & DeSimone, 2001), and college adjustment, well-being, flourishing, and optimism in student veterans (Umucu, 2017; Umucu et al., 2018; Umucu, Grenawalt, et al., 2019; Umucu, Wu, et al., 2019).

Harris developed an initial version of an individual-differences measure of hope, the Trait Hope Scale (THS), which Snyder, Harris, and colleagues (1991) further developed by shortening the original version while retaining both the agency and pathways subcomponents. Yoshinobu (1989) used the THS to determine whether college students imagine themselves in a situation where they either did or did not face an obstacle to reach their desired goal of receiving a particular course grade. As predicted, students who ranked in the high-hope category produced more responses related to agency and pathways behaviors than did the low-hope students.

Research in this area continues to evolve; to promote understanding of adjustment to college life and related stressors in student veterans, research into the impact of hope on this adjustment process is warranted. The THS serves as a reliable and valid measure of hope among various populations (e.g., Cheavens, Feldman, Gum, Michael, & Synder, 2006) and can serve as a useful tool in such inquiries. As a result, we sought to further examine the psychometric properties of the THS to lay the foundation for its future use in research into the impact of hope among student veterans.

Table 1.

Demographic Characteristics of Participants (N = 205, M_age = 29.3, SD = 8.0)

METHOD

Following institutional review board approval, information about the research project was disseminated electronically to student veterans through directors of student veterans offices. Around 15 student veterans centers were contacted, and some of those contacts shared the information with student veterans offices at other campuses. Data were collected via an online survey platform from 205 student veterans (Mage = 29.3 years, SD = 8.0) who volunteered to participate in this study. Of these, 147 (71.7%) were male, and 57 (27.8%) were female, 1 unreported. Most participants identified as White (80.5%), and 80 (39%) participants had service-connected disabilities. Table 1 provides participant demographic information.

The THS was used to measure dispositional hope. It comprises 12 items and 2 subscales: (a) agency thinking, 4 items; (b) pathways thinking, 4 items; and (c) fillers, 4 items. Five other instruments were also used to assess the validity of the THS. These instruments measure constructs with which hope is correlated in theoretically expected directions. The Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008) is a six-item scale measuring resilience. The PERMA-Profiler (Butler & Kern, 2016) measures well-being through the lens of the positive...