Psychometrical Analysis of Beck Hopelessness Scale in High School Students from Arequipa

Introduction: The hopelessness is a feeling of pessimism about the future related to experiences in present time. Its study has implied the design of the Beck Hopelessness Scale, which has been applied in different countries around the world, with clinical and psychometrical approaches. The present study has as aim the valuation of the validity and reliability of BHS in adolescents from Arequipa City. Population and methods: The BHS was applied to 872 students from five public high schools from Arequipa, who were aged 14 to 18 years old. The validity was estimated by exploratory and confirmatory analysis, and reliability by the Cronbach's Alpha Test. Results: The confirmatory factor analysis show a three factors structure, but items 4, 8 and 18 had to be eliminated in order to get better goodness of fit indexes, although, the values of reliability did not reach the minimum criteria of 0.7, which suggests that the scale has no internal consistence. Conclusion: The BHS has three factor construct validity, but its indexes of reliability are not adequate for adolescent population from public high schools at Arequipa City.