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Objective: To study the developmental trajectory of hope among late-adolescents, taking population heterogeneity and the impact of gender and family socioeconomic status (SES) into consideration.Methods: The study used the Snyder Hope Scale to perform four surveys of a sample of 381 Chinese late-adolescents, both male and female, with a mean age of 17.69 ± 1.12 years, over the course of one year, and employed a growth mixture model to perform data analysis.Results: Although the levels of hope among the respondents who had high and moderate levels of hope at the outset of the study remained relatively stable over the course of the year, those with low levels of hope exhibited a significant decrease over time.Conclusions: There is significant population heterogeneity in late-adolescents' developmental trajectory of hope. Additionally, gender and family SES have a significant effect on the developmental trajectory of hope, as significantly more female students than male students reported high levels of hope. Furthermore, participants with high family SES outnumbered those with low family SES in the high-hope group, whereas those with low SES outnumbered those with high SES in the low-hope group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original Snyder's Dispositional Hope Scale (DHS) was applied to 224 American college students and the Chinese version to 255 Chinese college students. Equivalence of the two DHS was tested, including configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance. The results demonstrated that the Snyder's DHS has measurement equivalence between Chinese and American college students; that is, the same psychological structure was measured in Chinese and American college samples. Therefore, cross‐cultural measurements of hope are valid. In addition, Chinese college students and American college students did not differ significantly on the Agency factor of the DHS whereas American students scored significantly higher than did Chinese college students on the Pathways factor. This dissimilarity may be explained by differences in the cultural backgrounds and education systems of the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: This study aimed to examine the relationship between depression and two dimensions of hope (pathways thinking and agency thinking) in college students and explore the dynamics of the causal relationship between these variables. Methods: A longitudinal study was conducted and included 381 college students. Hope and depression were measured using Snyder's State Hope Scale and the Center for Epidemiological Survey Depression Scale respectively, four times within a year (at 4‐month intervals), and cross‐lagged regression analysis was performed. Results: The bidirectional paths between pathways thinking and depression were highly significant. The paths from agency thinking to depression were non‐significant, but the paths from depression to agency thinking were significant. Conclusion: There was a significant bidirectional relationship between pathways thinking and depression. In addition, depression levels predicted levels of agency thinking, but levels of agency thinking did not predict depression levels. Therefore, interventions for depression should include strategies that assist individuals in the use of pathways thinking to establish specific routes via which to achieve their goals. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]