Assessment of Discriminant Validity for Measures of Hope and Hopelessness in Adults With an Acute Cardiac Event.
Holli A DeVon, Nathan Tintle, Eleanor Rivera and 2 others
PMID 41492779WHAT IT FOUND
After a cardiac event, feeling hopeless did not mean having no hope.
Hopelessness and hope were related but separate, and many patients who felt hopeless still reported hope.
Key findings
01In the sample assessed about 2 weeks after hospitalization, higher hopelessness scores went with lower hope scores.
02The hopelessness and hope items formed separate groups in factor analysis, so the measures did not collapse into one scale.
03Two weeks after discharge, 93 patients had moderate or severe current hopelessness; 36 of them also had moderate or high current hope, and 47 had moderate or high general hope.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The sample came from one hospital and was mostly white, so the results may not apply to other populations. The data were collected only once, about 2 weeks after discharge, so the study cannot show how hope and hopelessness change over recovery. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that hopelessness causes low hope or that treating hopelessness raises hope. It used baseline data from a randomized trial but did not test the trial intervention. Depression was adjusted for, not removed, so the link between hopelessness and hope may still be influenced by depressive symptoms.
Declared interests
The supplied text names National Institute of Nursing Research funding. It does not include an author conflict-of-interest statement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hopelessness and hope are opposite ends of one spectrum, or that treating hopelessness will raise hope. This paper validated measures in cross-sectional baseline data. It did not test an intervention or show that changing hopelessness causes hope to change.