this subscale is part of the Mental Health Measure in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997).
1. In uncertain times‚ I usuallyexpect the best.
2. I rarely count on good thingshappening to me.
3. I’m always optimistic about myfuture.
4. I hardly ever expect things to gomy way.
This instrument can be found on pages 57-58 of Assessing Outcomes in Child and Youth Programs: A Practical Handbook‚ available online at: http://fyi.uwex.edu/topic/youth/
Values are assigned as follows:
1=Strongly Disagree
2= Disagree
3=Agree
4= Strongly Agree
Reverse coding: Items 2 and 4 are reverse coded and then the responses are totaled for the optimism score.
Bureau of Labor Statistics‚ U.S. Department of Labor (1997)‚ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth‚ Mental Health Measure‚ retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/nls/‚ September 12‚ 2004.