Can Hope Affect Social Support?A Longitudinal Study

Hope is one of the positive characters which is beneficial for body,mind,and behavior modification.Besides,it is able to promote individual’s growth and adaptation to the new environment.Hope is divided into trait hope and state hope.Both of them are consist of pathways thinking and agency thinking.Social support is also beneficial for body and mind,and it is able to enhance well-being.Large previous studies showed that hope and social support were positively correlated.Most studies considered that social support affected hope.Only one study suggested social support would affect hope,and then hope might affect social support inversely.But there is no empirical evidence supports this hypothesis of that study.Besides,the previous studies were cross-sectional pattern.It is necessary to conduct longitudinal study to explore the relationship between hope and social support.In the present study,two studies were conducted to examine this hypothesis.Study 1 was to revise the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale(CASSS)in sample of Chinese middle school students,so that the scale could be adapted in study 2.Study 2 was a longitudinal study to explore the relationship between hope and social support.All participants were Senior One students from one boarding high school which they all newly entered.Surveys were administered in the beginning,the mid-term and the end of the first semester.Cross-lagged model was built by the three-wave data.The results showed that:(1)The Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale was a valid tool to be applied in Chinese middle school students.(2)The latent variables of trait hope scale and the social relationship sub-scale of DSHS were positively correlated,that meant high hope people might actively communicate and establish friendship with others.(3)According to the survey of adapted self-designed questionnaire,most of the participants were willing to be friendly with the high hope people.(4)Two item parceling methods,internal-consistency approach and domain-representative approach,were applied to cross-lagged modeling.The cross-lagged analysis showed that hope and three sources of social support failed to predict each other between T1 and T2,but hope in T2 significantly predicted three sources of social support in T3.However,three sources of social support in T2 failed to predict hope in T3.These findings provide empirical evidences for the hypothesis that trait hope can affect social support.