A comparison of the internal consistency, reliability and convergent validity of two response formats for the Beck hopelessness scale

The Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) is a 20-item true/false questionnaire designed to measure a respondent's negative expectancies about the future. The construct of hopelessness has been found to correlate strongly with suicidal and parasuicidal behavior, and the BHS i s frequently used in the assessment of suicide risk. The primary purpose of the current study was to explore the impact on the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the BHS, when the scale's item response format was altered from its published true/false format to a system of scoring each item on a 6-point Likert scale. The sample investigated was drawn from an adult non-clinical population. Results indicated that there was no significant difference in the magnitude of the internal consistency reliability coefficients obtained with each of the two response formats tested. Results also indicated that, when considering the total sample, there was no significant difference in the magnitude of correlations found between the true/false versus the 6-point Likert scored BHS and the convergent measures investigated in the study. However, two levels of sex differences were found: within each BHS type tested (true/false and 6-point Likert) higher magnitude correlations were found between BHS scores and all of the other measures investigated for female participants than for male participants (although the differences failed to reach statistical significance) in the true/false BHS condition, and higher magnitude correlations were found for male participants than for female participants (two of the differences were significant at the .05 level) in the 6-point Likert condition. Additionally, within each sex, male participants obtained higher correlations (non-significantly) in the 6-point Likert compared to the true/false BHS condition with all measures investigated, while female participants in the true/false BHS group obtained higher correlations with all of the measures investigated (one of the differences was significant at the .05 level) relative to female participants in the 6-point Likert group. A number of interpretations and implications of the findings are discussed.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat