Against the background of different psychological conceptualizations of hope, this article elaborates and validates a measure to assess hope as perceived by the general public adapting it from the hope and optimism subscale of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Spirituality, Religion and Personal Beliefs Questionnaire. The results presented here are part of a yearly Internet-based cross-sectional survey in Germany and Switzerland called Hope-Barometer, from which 4 samples of 3 different years with about 17,500 participants have been used. Following the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses as well as convergent validity, discriminant value, and predictive utility, our findings suggest that the six items of the resulting Perceived Hope Scale exhibits robust psychometric properties, and that perceived hope is distinct and broader than dispositional hope, in which it relates not only to cognitive but also to spiritual, religious, and altruistic dimensions.

At first glance, hope and optimism appear to be two almost identical concepts. The predominant cognitive theories maintain that both are based on positive future expectancies regarding goal attainment. However, other approaches recommend distinguishing between hope and future expectancies and sustain that the differences between hope and optimism are of a more substantial nature. The present study investigates the distinction between a new short instrument to measure hope as perceived by the general public, and dispositional optimism as measured by the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) in a South African sample. After comparing both instruments using confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory structural equation modelling in Mplus, a number of encouraging results emanated from the data. First, the Perceived Hope Scale (PHS) is a unitary and coherent measure of perceived hope. Second, perceived hope, as measured by the PHS, and optimism and pessimism as measured by the LOT-R, are psychometrically distinguished latent dimensions, optimally specified by their indicator variables. Furthermore, perceived hope represents a fundamental construct in the prediction of health outcomes and well-being and is an important antecedent to optimism and dispositional hope. Perceived hope is thus an important additional facet to consider in investigating well-being.

The current chapter has the primary purpose of laying the theoretical grounds on which the cross-cultural empirical research program of the Hope Barometer between 2017 and 2021 was developed and executed. The two main goals of this chapter correspond to the inter- and transdisciplinary methodology applied in our work. The first goal is to give a brief interdisciplinary overview of psychological, philosophical, and theological theories presenting different perspectives from which the existential phenomenon of hope has been studied. Following previous research, hope will be examined along six general dimensions, which highlight the nature of hope as cognition, as affect, as behavior, as a social phenomenon, as a virtue, and from a religious perspective. Based on the similarities and complementary views of these different conceptualizations of hope, a basic transdisciplinary concept or model of hope will be presented. The proposed concept should do justice to the essence of hope, taking into account the diversity of situations in which people might hope and being sensitive to different cultural backgrounds. Our conceptualization of hope contains three fundamental elements, which are (1) a wish or desire for a valuable good, (2) the belief that the realization of this wish is possible but uncertain or even unlikely, and (3) the trust in the availability of current or future internal and external resources which can facilitate the fulfillment of the hoped-for good in the face of obstacles and setbacks. We understand wish, belief, and trust as the universal elements in the process of hoping. In concrete situations and different cultural contexts, these three elements can assume different forms and characteristics related to those mentioned above cognitive, affective, behavioral, social, religious, and value dimensions. The singular elements and dimensions serve as the core research domains, which will be elaborated on in detail in the following chapters of the book.