Hope levels across adolescence and the transition to high school: Associations with school stress and achievement

Longitudinal association between perceived economic stress and adolescents' depression in rural China: the mediating roles of hope trajectories

BACKGROUND

Family economic hardship is a risk factor for adolescents' depression. However, research on this topic is limited in its focus on objective economic conditions, and less is known about whether and how perceived economic stress is associated with adolescents' depression. This study explored the longitudinal relationship between perceived economic stress and depression and examined the extent to which heterogeneous developmental trajectories of hope explained the aforementioned relation in Chinese rural adolescents.

METHODS

A total of 2823 Chinese rural adolescents (56.0 % boys; Mage (T1) = 13.48 ± 0.50 years) participated in five assessments conducted at approximately six-month intervals over three years. Perceived economic stress was assessed at Time 1, hope was measured from Time 1 to Time 4, and depression was evaluated at Time 1 and Time 5.

RESULTS

The trajectories of hope were divided into three subgroups: "high-stable" (33.2 %), "moderate-decreasing" (41.9 %), and "low-decreasing" (24.9 %). Perceived economic stress was longitudinally and positively associated with depression, and this association was mediated by heterogeneous developmental trajectories of hope. Specifically, the mediation effect of low-decreasing and moderate-decreasing groups between perceived economic stress and depression was stronger than that of high-stable group, and there was no significant difference in the mediation effect between low-decreasing and moderate-decreasing groups.

LIMITATIONS

This study was limited by the nonrandomized sampling, the self-reporting method, and the relatively short observation period.

CONCLUSION

These findings demonstrate the long-term detrimental impact of perceived economic stress on depression among Chinese rural adolescents and underscore the importance of fostering hope in adolescents' intervention programs.

Hope for the Future and Its Associated Factors Among Adolescents in Tanzania: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction Hope is a universal, multidimensional psychological construct related to an individual's expectation that they will achieve desirable outcomes by setting realistic objectives. The study aims to investigate the factors associated with hope among adolescents in Tanzania. Methods Baseline characteristics were collected from 2,058 adolescent girls and 1,770 adolescent boys at 41 primary and 13 secondary schools in Korogwe District, Tanzania. The level of hope was measured using the Herth Hope Index. The associated hope factors were analyzed using multiple linear regression models based on sex. Results The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that secondary school students demonstrated significantly higher levels of hope for the future than primary school students among both adolescent girls and boys [95% CI]: 2.34 [1.53 to 3.15], 1.69 (0.98 to 2.41). Both Christian adolescent girls and boys had significantly higher levels of hope than their Muslim counterparts. Adolescent girls who intended to enrol in secondary school or obtain employment exhibited significantly higher levels of hope than those who were uncertain about their post-school plans.  Conclusions This study showed common and distinct factors associated with hope for the future ofadolescent girls and boys in Tanzania. This suggests that there are potential avenues for identifying target subpopulations of adolescent girls and boys and developing sex-specific interventions to enhance their hope for the future. Future research must focus on elucidating the methods for assessing and measuring hope in various populations in order to understand the essence of this concept based on strengths within particular cultural contexts.

The relationship between anxiety and depression in adolescent depression patients: The mediating effect of hope level and coping modes

Background

Adolescents diagnosed with depression are particularly susceptible to anxiety and depressive symptoms, this vulnerability often diminishes their future expectations and overall outlook on life. The objective of this research was to scrutinize the associated risk factors of adolescent depression and delineated the interplay between anxiety and depressive symptoms. Concurrently, it sought to ascertain the latent mediating effects of hope levels and coping strategies within this framework.

Methods

A mixed-methods research approach was employed. For the qualitative component, 18 adolescents with depression were interviewed following a semi-structured interview guide, with sessions audio-recorded. The data were subsequently transcribed and subjected to thematic content analysis. In the quantitative phase, a cross-sectional online survey was administered to 210 adolescents diagnosed with depression using Questionnaire Star, with data analysis performed using SPSS25.0 and AMOS 24.0.

Results

The qualitative analysis identified three major themes and nine categories as key risk factors influencing the onset of adolescent depression. Three major themes were generated: school factors, family factors, and other factors. Nine categories were generated: heavy academic load, strained peer, and teacher-student relationships; unstable family structures, internal familial conflicts, and high parental expectations; a strong sense of social isolation, insufficient sexual education, and prevalent suicidal ideation or attempts. A nurturing and supportive school environment significantly bolsters adolescents' sense of hope and coping abilities, while a warm and encouraging family setting effectively mitigates psychological stress. Conversely, heightened loneliness and the onset of suicidal ideation are frequently linked to diminished hope and the adoption of maladaptive coping strategies. Hence, to comprehensively understand the intricate interplay of these factors, this study concentrated on the levels of hope and coping mechanisms, investigating their potential mediating role in adolescent anxiety and depression. Quantitative analysis revealed a positive correlation between anxiety and depression (r = 0.767, p＜0.01). Additionally, it was found that hope levels and coping strategies mediated the relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms (β = -0.24-0.84 = 0.20, p < 0.001; β = 0.19-0.51 = -0.10, p < 0.01), with the mediating influence of hope levels being more significant than that of coping strategies.

Conclusion

Enhancing hope levels and fostering positive coping strategies are instrumental in aiding adolescents with depression to alleviate their anxiety and depressive symptoms. Moreover, this study underscored the importance of focusing on adolescents' mental health and providing them with emotional support, thereby increasing their hope levels and encouraging the adoption of positive coping mechanisms to effectively address their challenges.

Hope and its associations with academic-related outcomes and general wellbeing among college students: the importance of measurement specificity

BACKGROUND

Hope has been extensively studied as a predictor of college students' academic success. Most previous studies used domain-general, global hope measures to gauge the association between hope and academic performance among college students. However, a few studies have suggested that hope is domain-specific and domain-specific academic hope measures should be included in related research to better assess the influence of hope on academic outcomes. In this study, we aimed to further examine this issue to ascertain if there is value in including academic hope measures when studying the link between hope and academic outcomes in college students.

METHODS

Two samples of Hong Kong college students (total N = 1321) were recruited. Each participant completed a set of self-reported online questionnaires.

RESULTS

In both samples, global hope and academic hope emerged as related but separate factors in confirmatory factor analyses. Academic hope had consistently stronger unique explanatory power on academic performance and goal setting than global hope did. On the other hand, global hope explained more variance in general wellbeing than academic hope did, but its explanatory role in academic performance was not significant.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings support domain-specificity and show that hope measures explain more variance in outcomes in the matched domains. Therefore, academic hope measures should more routinely be included in related research to better evaluate the role of hope in academic pursuit among college students. Possible implications for hope interventions are also discussed.

The role of hope in college transition: Its cross-lagged relationships with psychosocial resources and emotional well-being in first-year college students

INTRODUCTION

College transition is often regarded as the most stressful phase of life by college students. Hence, it is necessary to find ways to help them adjust more smoothly to this transition. Hope, as conceptualized by C. R. Snyder, has been widely studied as a predictor of optimal functioning and has been shown to be associated with better adjustment among college students. This study aimed to shed light on the role of hope in college transition by examining its unique reciprocal relationships with an array of important psychosocial resources and emotional well-being among first-year college students.

METHODS

Data were collected from a sample of Hong Kong college freshmen (N = 433, Medianage = 18 years old, 63.7% female) at two time points. At each time point, participants completed self-reported measures tapping into their levels of hope, psychosocial resources, and emotional well-being. Psychological resources included general and academic self-efficacy, meaning in life, and optimism. Social resources included secure attachment, perceived school environment, and social support. Emotional well-being was operationalized as positive and negative emotions. Cross-lagged panel models were constructed and tested by path analyses.

RESULTS

When autoregression and the effects of other variables were controlled, a greater sense of hope uniquely predicted higher levels of general and academic self-efficacy, greater presence of life meanings, more secure attachment, and more positive and fewer negative emotions. On the other hand, higher levels of meaning in life (both presence and search) and social support uniquely predicted greater hope. Academic hope and presence of life meanings reciprocally predicted one another, whereas other significant cross-lagged relationships were unidirectional.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest interventions that promote hope can be useful in helping college freshmen adjust to the new college environment by enhancing their psychosocial resources and emotional well-being. Such interventions would be more effective if they included elements that boost meaning in life and social support, which are expected to further enhance the perceptions of hope.

Hope in adolescence and subsequent health and well-being in adulthood: An outcome-wide longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

A sense of hopelessness is rising at alarming levels among adolescents in the United States. There is urgent need to understand the potential implications of being hopeful on adolescents' future health and wellbeing.

METHODS

This study utilized data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,038, mean age at baseline = 15 years) to prospectively examine the relationship between baseline hope and a wide range of outcomes 12 years later. Thirty-eight outcomes were examined in the domains of physical health, health behavior, mental health, psychological well-being, social factors, and civic and prosocial behavior. Regression models were used to regress each outcome on baseline hope separately. Models controlled for a wide range of factors as well as prior values of the exposure (hope) and outcomes.

RESULTS

Having hope for the future in adolescence was associated with improvements in 11 subsequent outcomes after Bonferonni correction, including higher cognition and self-rated health, less physical inactivity, fewer depressive symptoms, lower perceived stress, and improvement on a number of psychological and social factors including greater happiness, more satisfaction with parenting, and increased voting and volunteering in adulthood. There were also a number of associations that were close to the null, which are equally important to explore and understand.

IMPLICATIONS

The results of the study may have important implications for hope-based efforts and programs aimed at improving the lives of young people and promoting their current and future well-being.

A serial mediation model of negative life events on school adjustment of left-behind adolescents in rural china: the central role of hope and gratitude

Adjustment difficulties of school students are common and their school adjustment has gained wide concern in recent years. Negative life events (NLEs) hope, and gratitude have been associated with school adjustment. However, the potential effect of NLEs on hope and gratitude and whether hope and gratitude mediate the association between NLEs and school adjustment among high students have not been studied. Thus, this study aims to investigate the association between NLEs, hope and gratitude, and school adjustment in high school students in China. Additionally, the study aims to examine the mediating role of hope and gratitude in the association between NLEs and school adjustment. A total of 700 junior high school students in Guangxi Province (336 boys, 364 girls, M age = 15 years) completed the questionnaire. The results indicated significant mediating effects of hope and gratitude in the sequential positive association between NLEs and school adjustment. Furthermore, this study unraveled the complexity of the link between NLEs and school adjustment with the combination of hope and gratitude. The findings emphasized the importance of fostering hope and gratitude in left-behind adolescents to combat the negative consequences of NLEs. The study is also one of the first to investigate a serial mediation model to determine which NLEs influence Chinese left-behind adolescents' school adjustment.

Homework, sleep insufficiency and adolescent neurobehavioral problems: Shanghai Adolescent Cohort

BACKGROUND

The prospective associations between homework burdens and adolescent neurobehavioral problems, and whether sleep-durations mediated and sex modified such associations remained unclear.

METHODS

Using Shanghai-Adolescent-Cohort study, 609 middle-school students were recruited and investigations took place at Grade 6, 7 and 9. Information on homework burdens (defined by homework completion-time and self-perceived homework difficulty), bedtime/wake-up-time and neurobehavioral problems was collected. Two patterns of comprehensive homework burdens ('high' vs. 'low') were identified by latent-class-analysis and two distinct neurobehavioral trajectories ('increased-risk' vs. 'low-risk') were formed by latent-class-mixture-modeling.

RESULTS

Among the 6th-9th graders, the prevalence-rates of sleep-insufficiency and late-bedtime ranged from 44.0 %-55.0 % and 40.3 %-91.6 %, respectively. High homework burdens were concurrently associated with increased-risks of neurobehavioral problems (IRRs: 1.345-1.688, P < 0.05) at each grade, and such associations were mediated by reduced sleep durations (IRRs for indirect-effects: 1.105-1.251, P < 0.05). High homework burden at the 6th-grade (ORs: 2.014-2.168, P < 0.05) or high long-term (grade 6-9) homework burden (ORs: 1.876-1.925, P < 0.05) significantly predicted increased-risk trajectories of anxiety/depression and total-problems, with stronger associations among girls than among boys. The longitudinal associations between long-term homework burdens and increased-risk trajectories of neurobehavioral problems were mediated by reduced sleep-durations (ORs for indirect-effects: 1.189-1.278, P < 0.05), with stronger mediation-effects among girls.

LIMITATIONS

This study was restricted to Shanghai adolescents.

CONCLUSIONS

High homework burden had both short-term and long-term associations with adolescent neurobehavioral problems, with stronger associations among girls, and sleep-insufficiency may mediate such associations in a sex-specific manner. Approaches targeting appropriate homework-load/difficulty and sleep restoration may help prevent adolescent neurobehavioral problems.

Virtuous Hope: Moral Exemplars, Hope Theory, and the Centrality of Adversity and Support

Psychology has primarily studied hope as a value-neutral trait even though it has a history of being counted among the virtues. The current study seeks to conceptualize hope as a virtue while building on the dominant empirical paradigm (Hope Theory; Snyder, 2002). Ithemba is the isiZulu word for hope, and this qualitative study investigated the lived experiences and meaning construction of ithemba/hope among 13 nominated moral exemplars in a South African township. Participants ranged from 20 to 75+, including farmers, educators, caregivers, entrepreneurs, and construction workers. Independent coders conducted thematic analysis from a theoretical top-down process (within Hope Theory and virtue science frameworks) and an inductive bottom-up approach (open coding). Data reflected much of the existing Hope Theory model; however, many pathways were relational and spiritual, and goals were inherently beneficial to others. A virtue science framework was used to construct the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral dimensions of virtuous hope. This study constructed the operational definition of virtuous hope as the ardent pursuit of realizing a particular vision of the common good with intention and action, often growing out of adversity and shaped in relation to other people and the transcendent.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41042-022-00083-1.

Online Learning Stress and Chinese College Students' Academic Coping during COVID-19: The Role of Academic Hope and Academic Self-Efficacy

Colleges around the world have adopted emergency online learning to continue with teaching and learning activities during COVID-19. Existing research has indicated that this teaching mode is perceived negatively by many college students. The difficulty students encounter in emergency online learning can adversely affect their mental health and academic performance. To shed further light on how emergency online learning may have impeded college students' academic functioning and adjustment, this study examined the association between online learning stress and academic coping and the mediating roles of academic self-efficacy and academic hope. It was conducted in early 2021, a year after the outbreak of the pandemic. Ninety-nine Chinese college students in Hong Kong were recruited and they completed an online questionnaire for this study. Results showed that online learning stress was negatively associated with approach academic coping and social support seeking, and the associations were mediated by academic hope. On the other hand, online learning stress was positively associated with avoidance academic coping, which was not mediated by academic hope. The mediation effects of academic self-efficacy were all non-significant. In sum, college students used more passive and maladaptive coping to handle academic problems when they experienced more online learning stress, and this was partly explained by lower levels of academic hope.

A multimethod examination of hope and adolescent STEM career expectancies

INTRODUCTION

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are growing rapidly and understanding adolescent's interest and hope for pursuing a STEM career is essential for additional growth and opportunity collectively and individually. Hope is a cognitive-motivational construct that includes three components: hopeful future expectations (HFEs), intentional self-regulation (ISR), and connection, and is associated with academic achievement and career pursuit; it has not been examined in relation to STEM. This study fills a gap in the literature by taking a multimethod approach to understanding the association between adolescents' hope and STEM career interests.

METHODS

Participants were 639 middle- and high-school adolescents in the southwestern United States who quantitatively reported their hope and STEM career interests and provided qualitative descriptions of reasons for wanting to pursue a STEM career.

RESULTS

Quantitatively, HFEs significantly and positively predicted STEM career interest. Relations were examined by gender and school level. For middle-school girls, ISR significantly predicted STEM career interest, for middle-school boys and high-school girls, HFEs positively significantly predicted STEM career interest, but results of high-school boys were nonsignificant. Qualitatively, adolescents mentioned reasons aligning with HFEs and ISR as motivations for pursuing a STEM career, as well as prosocial motivations. Additionally, they discussed their interest in a STEM career as a way to pursue other goals such as financial stability.

DISCUSSION

Findings highlight the possibility of hope as a malleable motivation for STEM career pursuit. Our findings support the components of hope as a salient associate of early STEM career interest, with adolescents who have high HFEs and ISR being particularly apt to say they would like to pursue a STEM career. Our results support the active development of hope among US adolescents as a catalyst toward personal and global success.

Learning Difficulties and Loneliness in College and Beyond: The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy, Proactive Coping, and Hope

Following the conservation of resources, social-cognitive and hope theories, the goals of this study were to identify the role of self-efficacy, proactive coping, and hope as mediators in the relations between learning difficulties and loneliness distress. A questionnaire was sent to current and past students. The sample consisted of 498 participants. The results demonstrated that individuals with learning difficulties reported higher levels of loneliness compared with individuals without learning difficulties. Moreover, self-efficacy, proactive coping, and hope mediated the relations between levels of learning difficulties and loneliness. Specifically, the final model emphasized the important role of hopeful beliefs, since hope mediated the relations between learning difficulties, self-efficacy, and proactive coping with loneliness. In terms of practical implications, professionals' awareness as well as psychoeducational programs could be tailor-made to enhance hopeful beliefs and reduce loneliness.