Measuring And Intervening Research On Hope For Junior High School Students

Constructs related to hope began to be introduced into the psychological and psychiatric literature in the 1950s. A recent model of hope was developed by Snyder and his colleagues in Kansas University Psychology Department. They have done many very important researches which bring the benefits to the fields such as education, health and mental health, psycho-therapy and counseling. Many researches show the significant influence of hope on human being's psychological and spiritual development, physical and mental health condition,life satisfaction and social adjustment.The present dissertation proposed a series research, which focus on a hope measure, hope invention and its effects evaluation. Firstly, we revised"the Trait Hope Scale"for junior high school students. Date from 290 junior high school students in beginning test and 460 in later test have been analyzed to research the reliability and variability of"the Trait Hope Scale"and examined the differences between male and female student groups, difference year students, and the differences between students that come from country and city. Then, A study of developing an intervention model"Instill hope: a class group training model for junior high school students"which is a 8 sessions and 2 months approach and 56 junior school students practiced for improving their hope. At last, a quantitative and a qualitative research combined to study the effects of hope stilling group intervention.There are seven findings in the researches by analyzing the data: 1."the Trait Hope Scale"has psychometrically acceptable reliability and validity, and the construct validity and criteria validity are acceptable; 2.Generally, there are significant differences among the different grade in hope. Hope decreases while the grade level increases. But it is higher hope level in Grade1 One of high school students than Grade Three of junior school students; 3. No significant difference between male and female group on"the Trait Hope Scale"; 4.There are significant differences between the students that come from county and city in the whole hope trait level and the pathway thinking, but not in agency thinking; 5.The Hope of junior and high school students can be significantly improved as whole by the hope intervention; 6. Hope intervention could both improve individual's agency thinking and pathway thinking ,especially in pathway thinking;7.There are positive influences for the junior high school students by increasing hope .