Trait Emotion Hope Scale

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Abstract

The trait emotion hope Scale (TEHS) represents a significant advancement in psychological assessment by operationalizing hope strictly as an affective experience. Historically, psychometric tools have heavily leaned on cognitive frameworks, defining hope primarily through goal-directed planning and motivation. However, this cognitive bias neglects the fundamental way many individuals experience hope—as a distinct emotional state. Developed to bridge this theoretical gap, the TEHS captures the enduring emotional residue of goal pursuits.

Through a rigorous three-study validation process involving 2,900 participants, the creators established a robust tool that isolates the emotional components of hope from its cognitive counterparts. By focusing on the affective dimension, the TEHS offers researchers and clinicians a more holistic approach to psychological assessment, ensuring that the emotional nuances of hope are accurately measured and understood in both research and applied settings.

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Keywords
hope
emotion
psychometrics
trait emotion
Elaborated Hope Theory
scale development
Positive Psychology

Authors

👤 David B Feldman
🏛 Department of Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, United States

👤 Hooria Jazaieri
✉ [email protected]
🏛 Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA, United States

Purpose

For decades, researchers and clinicians have relied on instruments that measure how people think about their goals, largely ignoring how they feel about them. This cognitive-heavy approach has limited the field's ability to fully capture the essence of hope, especially since laypeople intuitively describe hope as a feeling rather than a thought process. The TEHS was designed specifically to rectify this imbalance in the literature.

By providing a validated measure of hope as an emotion, the TEHS allows researchers to investigate the unique affective drivers of resilience and well-being. Clinicians can also use this tool to better understand their clients' emotional landscapes, distinguishing between a client's strategic ability to plan for the future and their actual emotional optimism regarding those plans. This distinction is crucial for tailoring therapeutic interventions that target emotional deficits rather than just cognitive restructuring.

Construct

The psychological construct underlying the TEHS is rooted in the 'emotion set' component of Elaborated Hope Theory. While traditional models focus on the cognitive mechanics of agency (motivation) and pathways (planning), the elaborated model acknowledges that repeated successes or failures in goal pursuit leave a lasting emotional imprint. This trait-like emotional disposition dictates how individuals feel about their future prospects.

A person with high trait emotion hope naturally experiences pervasive positive affect, approaches new goals with enthusiasm, and responds to obstacles with resilient, approach-oriented emotions rather than defeat. The TEHS captures this specific affective network, separating the generalized feeling of hopefulness from the cognitive strategies used to achieve specific outcomes. It measures the enduring emotional baseline that colors an individual's worldview and future expectations.

Validity

Establishing the validity of a new psychometric tool requires proving that it measures exactly what it claims to measure, without overlapping entirely with existing constructs. The developers of the TEHS conducted extensive convergent and discriminant validity analyses to ensure the scale captures a unique psychological space.

Crucially, their findings demonstrated that the emotional experience of hope accounts for significant unique variance in psychological outcomes above and beyond traditional cognitive hope measures. This means the TEHS is not simply measuring the same goal-directed thoughts under a different name; it successfully isolates the affective dimension, proving its distinct utility and confirming that emotional hope and cognitive hope, while related, are not redundant constructs.

Reliability

A cornerstone of any effective psychological instrument is its reliability, meaning it consistently measures the target construct without excessive error. Throughout the scale development process, the TEHS was subjected to rigorous internal consistency evaluations across multiple large samples.

By piloting the items and refining them across different participant pools, the researchers ensured that the items cohesively capture the unified construct of trait emotional hope. This high degree of internal consistency indicates that the scale's items reliably tap into the same underlying affective experience, making it a dependable tool for both cross-sectional and longitudinal psychological studies.

Factor Analysis

To uncover and verify the structural integrity of the TEHS, the researchers employed a robust two-step factor analytic approach. Initially, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was utilized in Study 2 to observe how the newly generated items naturally grouped together based on participant responses, allowing the researchers to identify the most mathematically sound underlying structure.

Following this, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was executed in Study 3 using a large, diverse international sample. This critical step cross-validated the initial findings, proving that the scale's structural model holds up across different populations and is not merely an artifact of the original sample. This rigorous structural validation ensures that the TEHS operates consistently across diverse demographic groups.

FIGURE 1
Study 2 scree plot indicating a single factor with an eigenvalue above 1.
FIGURE 2
Graphical representation of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model.

Instrument

Test Type Self-report questionnaire
Language English
Population General population, Adults
Administration Self-administered

Figures

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Trait Emotion Hope Scale Items

📋 Items are currently not available

The individual items of this scale are not publicly available. Researchers interested in using this instrument should contact the original authors directly to request the scale materials.

Sample

The scale was developed and validated across three distinct studies comprising a total sample size of N = 2,900 participants, which included a large, international sample for the confirmatory factor analysis.

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Cite This Paper

David B Feldman, Hooria Jazaieri (2024). trait emotion hope Scale. Frontiers in psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1322807

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References
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Cite this article

Mohammed looti (2026). Trait Emotion Hope Scale. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Retrieved from https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/trait-emotion-hope-scale/

Mohammed looti. "Trait Emotion Hope Scale." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 14 Aug. 2026, https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/trait-emotion-hope-scale/.

Mohammed looti. "Trait Emotion Hope Scale." PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, 2026. https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/trait-emotion-hope-scale/.

Mohammed looti (2026) 'Trait Emotion Hope Scale', PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. Available at: https://scales.arabpsychology.com/s/trait-emotion-hope-scale/.

[1] Mohammed looti, "Trait Emotion Hope Scale," PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES, vol. X, no. Y, ص Z-Z, August, 2026.

Mohammed looti. Trait Emotion Hope Scale. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCALES. 2026;vol(issue):pages.

Related terms:

  1. The Hope Scale
  2. Domain Specific Hope Scale (DSHS)
  3. Hope Replenishing System Questions
  4. Herth Hope Index (HHI)
  5. Hope in Children
  6. Hope test- Adult
  7. Hope Test- Child/Teen
  8. State-Trait Assessment of Resilience Scale
  9. Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale Short Form
  10. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE STATE AND TRAIT ANXIETY SCALE
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