Bottaro Rossella, Faraci Palmira
Department of Human and Social Sciences, Psychometrics Laboratory, University of Enna "Kore", Italy.
J Affect Disord. 2024 Sep 15;361:457-464. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.06.048. Epub 2024 Jun 17.
The assessment of hopelessness plays a significant role in preventing various psychological disorders and major life events within the general population. However, the psychometric properties of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) have been a subject of controversy, primarily studied in clinical groups. The aim of the present study was to gain new psychometric insights and propose a new short version of the BHS for the general population using the Item Response Theory (IRT) approach.
A total of 2164 Argentinean individuals completed the BHS alongside the Inventory of Suicide Orientation-30. We compared IRT models with two and three parameters for the original BHS version, exploring the removal of redundant and less informative items. Convergent and discriminant validity was also examined.
Our results support the 2PL model for the BHS-19. In addition, the BHS-10 short version adequately depicted the same range of the measured trait as the original version, showing reasonable measurement accuracy in the middle-high levels of the trait (marginal reliability = 0.70, Cronbach's α = 0.86). Notably, a positive correlation was found between the factorial score of BHS-10, BHS-19, and suicide orientation.
In conclusion, our findings support the use of a simplified version as a practical and valuable tool for both research and clinical practice in the future.
绝望感评估在预防普通人群的各种心理障碍和重大生活事件中发挥着重要作用。然而，贝克绝望量表（BHS）的心理测量特性一直存在争议，主要是在临床群体中进行研究。本研究的目的是利用项目反应理论（IRT）方法获得新的心理测量见解，并为普通人群提出一个新的BHS简短版本。
共有2164名阿根廷人在完成自杀倾向量表-30的同时完成了BHS。我们比较了原始BHS版本的二参数和三参数IRT模型，探索去除冗余和信息量少的项目。还检验了收敛效度和区分效度。
我们的结果支持BHS - 19的2PL模型。此外，BHS - 10简短版本充分描绘了与原始版本相同的测量特质范围，在特质的中高水平显示出合理的测量准确性（边际信度 = 0.70，克朗巴哈α系数 = 0.86）。值得注意的是，发现BHS - 10、BHS - 19的因子得分与自杀倾向之间存在正相关。
总之，我们的研究结果支持在未来将简化版本用作研究和临床实践中实用且有价值的工具。
