Validation of The Hopelessness Scale for Children in Indonesia Students

The Hopelessness Scale for Children (HSC) is a self-report instrument assessing hopelessness and predicting suicidal behavior in adolescents . This measurement has been validated in several languages. Therefore, the present study aims to adapt and validate the HSC in the Indonesian version. The adaptation stage in this study using six steps of ITC guidance. The reliability was calculated by the internal consistency method. Four hundred and ninety-two students (male = 27.64%, female = 72.36%; M age = 15.99; SD = 0.79) participated in a questionnaire survey. According to the calculation of CVI, 17 items are valid through five expert judgments. The First-order CFA test showed a fit model of the Indonesian version of HSC. To measure the concurrent validity of the scale, the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) was performed in parallel. We found a positive correlation between HSC and CDI ( r = .58). In addition, the reliability score’s Cronbach’s alpha also fulfilled the requirement ( α =.75).


Introduction
Suicidal ideation is now commonly experienced by adolescents (Orri et al., 2020).Hopelessness is one of the determining factors of suicidal ideation (Primananda & Keliat, 2019), defined as the negative expectation of the future, connected with the negative view of self and the world (Kazdin & et al, 1983).Hopelessness is also considered the main characteristic of depression (Yu & Lee, 2017) which caused retarded initiation, sad affect, negative cognitive style, suicide attempts and suicide ideation, lack of energy, sleep disturbance, difficulty in concentration, and low self-esteem (Zhou & Chen, 2017).There are two core elements of hopelessness.First, hopelessness embodies a belief that everything happens in life is negative.Second, it is believed that positive and fun events will unlikely occur in the future (Alloy et al., 1988).
In the educational context, hopelessness can act as the outcome and determinant of students' academic performance (Papalia & Martorell, 2014).When the students perceive that they are incapable of performing academically well, they will see themselves as academically helpless.
Furthermore, hopelessness can prevent individuals from achieving success (Prihadi et al., 2019;(Sideridis, 2003).Students' perception of their academic abilities would influence their self-image and well-being, which, in turn, leads to hopelessness if they are unable to achieve satisfying academic performance (Petegem et al., 2007;Han & Shek, 2012;York et al., 2015).In the school context, hopelessness could trigger negative moods in students (Villavicencio & Bernardo, 2013); the negative emotion decreases the enjoyment of the learning process, causing a decrease in their academic motivation (Olafson & Ferraro, 2001).Students who experience hopelessness tend to avoid school because they feel hurt and bothered by the school situation (Jones et al., 2020).Moreover, hopelessness is even reported causing suicidal ideation when students fail in their academic tests (Pekrun et al., 2002).
Because hopelessness plays an important role as a suicide predictor in adults (Hanna et al., 2011(Hanna et al., ), in 1974, for the first time, a scale to measure hopelessness was developed (Lew et al., 2019).It is a 20-item self-report scale; covering affection, motivation, and negative expectations (Prihadi et al., 2019).In 1983, the Hopelessness Scale for Children (HSC), was developed (Spirito et al., 1988).In its early development, the HSC was used to measure hopelessness in pediatric psychiatric patients aged 8-13 years old.The internal consistency for the scale is satisfactory with an alpha coefficient value of 0.75 (Kazdin & et al, 1983).
Next, in 1986, Kazdin, Rodgers, and Colbs developed the psychometric properties of the HSC using the characteristics and concurrent validity using four scales: Children Depression Inventory (CDI), The Bellevue Index of Depression (BID), The Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI), and Matson Evaluation of Social Skill with Youngsters (MESSY).The results showed that hopelessness positively correlates with depression and negatively with self-worth and social behavior (Kazdin et al., 1986).The HSC developed by Kazdin used samples from the 6-13 age population.Because hopelessness did not only occur in children and adolescents in that age range, it was suggested developing HSC for teenagers age (Kazdin & et al., 1983).A recent study was conducted to develop HSC using divergent/convergent validity, for teenagers in Iran, ranging from 12-19 years old (Habibi et al., 2017).The result showed that HSC positively correlates with depression and negatively correlates with self-efficacy.Confirmatory factor analysis using first order showed that the HSC is suitable to measure hopelessness in adolescents.The Cronbach's alpha for HSC is also shown to be relatively satisfied with the value of .70.
Given that the suicide rate of Indonesian adolescents is increasing every year, it is important to examine hopelessness as a predictor of suicide (Kementerian Kesehatan RI, 2019; Wolfe et al., 2019).A study of the hopelessness of Indonesian adolescents could begin by providing a validated measurement to measure adolescents' level of hopelessness.Based on the literature review, currently, no available scale to measure the level of hopelessness in Indonesian adolescents.
Therefore, this study aims to validate the HSC used in Indonesian adolescents.

Procedure
This research used the International Test Commission (ITC) guidelines for the adaptation test (Bartram et al., 2018).The ITC has 18 steps of adaptation, organized into six stages: (1) the preconditioning, (2) testing development, (3) confirmation, (4) administration, (5) scoring and interpretation, and (6) documentation.This study conducted three categories of ITC, including the pre-condition stage, test development, and confirmation of ITC guidelines.
In stage (1), Pre-conditions, including getting permission to use the HSC, from the author of the English version of HSC (see Apendix I)and reviewed the hopelessness construct.Three psychologists conducted a literature review of the concept of hopelessness, to avoid biases from constructs and to minimize the influence of cultural and linguistic differences.given an explanation of the construction of hopelessness.The criteria for translators at each stage consist of one adolescent child clinical psychologist and one translator from a language institution.Each translator has experience translating academic documents and meets the English language proficiency requirements (TOEFL minimum 550).
The translators worked independently, to obtain objective and comparable translation results.
Translators are provided with preliminary information regarding the purpose of HCS translations; iii) Synthesizing the translation results by five experts and calculating the content validity index (CVI), and the experts reviewed translation results through a cognitive interview (verbal probing method).
Expert reviewers are selected from academicians, with practical professions in the field of clinical psychology, to obtain input by following the conditions of hopelessness among adolescents in Indonesia.A cognitive interview was conducted with three adolescents 17-year-olds by asking the participants to fill out a questionnaire, then asking about the impressions of the words, and what to revise from the words; iv) Provide evidence that the item format and other procedures are suitable for Indonesian adolescents; v) Piloting data and confirming evidence about psychometric quality.

Procedures
After the instrument was available in Indonesian, the administration was conducted.The research assistant shared the research information with schools in several regions in Indonesia through social media.The voluntary schools were then contacted, and the participants were selected based on the recommendation of the school authority and parent's permission.Each participant had completed informed consent and filled out questionnaires online using a google-form (G-form).The total participants obtained in this study were 492 spread across several regions in Indonesia.

Measurement
The Hopelessness Scale for Children (HSC) was used to evaluate hopelessness in adolescents.The HSC has 17 statement items.The answers available consist of two options, namely (right and wrong).
The score measurements on this scale are as follows: For positive items, the correct answer gets one point, and the wrong answer gets zero.Positive items are on item no (16,11,7,1,3,4,5,6).
As for the negative items, the opposite; if the answer is true, the score is zero, while the false answer gets one point.Negative statements include numbers (2,8,9,10,12,13,14,15,17). The final score is calculated by summing the scores of all items; a score of 17 represents the highest level of despair, while a score of 0 represents the lowest level of despair (Kazdin & et al., 1983).
The Children Depression Inventory (CDI) was used to measure symptoms of depression in children and adolescents.A CDI is a self-report consisting of 27 items divided into 3 points on the Likert scale, i.e., 0 points (sometimes), 1 (often), and 2 (always).CDI measures depression through 5 dimensions: mood, interpersonal problems, ineffectiveness, anhedonia, and negative self-esteem.A high score indicates a higher level of depression.Over the past 35 years, CDI has been influential in facilitating research on depression in children.CDI has produced some preliminary predictions regarding the symptoms of pediatric depression in children (Kovacs, 2015).The validity of the CDI-Indonesian version was confirmed by a fairly high correlation value between CDI and BDI (Beck Depression Inventory) with r= 0.561 (N = 109)and a satisfactory GOF (GFI = 0.995; AGFI= 0.985; CFI=0.995; and RMSEA= 0.047) (Widhiarso & Retnowati, 2011).

Data Analysis
The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to confirm the factor structure using the LISREL 88.0 programs with maximum likelihood estimation.To examine the fit model, the following criteria are used: which are (1) comparative fit index (CFI) ≥ 0.90 will indicate a good fit CFA model, (2) goodness-of-fit index (GFI) ≥ 0.90, (3) a significant root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ≤ 0.08, and (4) normative fit index (NFI) ≥ 0.95 (Hooper et al., 2008) Table 1 shows the descriptive statistic and corrected item-total correlation.Kazdin et al., (1986)did not set the norm to categorize the level of hopelessness.The corrected item-total correlation values ranged from r = .09(item no. 3) to r = .47(item no.10).Based on the minimum criteria of corrected item-total correlation; item number 3 needs to be revised (Li et al., 2014), (Boateng et al., 2018).

Internal Consistency
The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was computed for the final 17 items and found acceptable (Cronbach's alpha = .75).

Concurrent Validity
The HSC score and BDI achieved a significant and moderate correlation (r =.58, p = 0.00).

Discussion
Hopelessness in adolescents is a problem that needs immediate attention because it can lead to further dysfunction in the social and educational context (Au et al., 2009).In this study, we examined the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Indonesian version of the HCS.The result showed that HCS has good psychometric properties.CFA of HSC showed satisfactory psychometric properties, shown in the fulfillment of requirements, being the model testing fulfilling the goodness of fit criteria (p-value>0.05),RMSEA<0.08,GFI, CFI, AGFI>0.90 (Hooper et al., 2008), (Sun, 2005).
The reliability testing results based on Cronbach alpha also fulfilled the criteria reliability score of >0.70 (Hair JF, William CB, Barry JB, 2010).The overall analysis showed that the adaptation of HSC had fulfilled the validity and reliability requirements per the required criteria.
Previous research showed similar results to our study (Spirito et al., 1988) in their research in the United States obtained an acceptable Cronbach alpha coefficient for the HCS-English version's reliability.The research by (Habibi et al., 2017) in Persia obtained a similar result, with the reliability Cronbach alpha score of .77; in previous studies all items have a corrected item-total correlation value that supports the conceptual idea of hopelessness (Spirito et al., 1988).In the present study, one item has a value below the criteria for item no 3, "When things are going badly, I know that they won't be bad all of the time."The low value of corrected item-total correlation could be caused by inaccuracies in the wording, thus making the participants feel confused and unable to understand the content of the statements given (Thunberg Jespersen et al., 2014).The different responses from individual could be caused by the influence of local cultural effects (Rahmawati et al., 2022;Mendelson & Tandon, 2016).
On the evidence of content validity of HSC, a CVI was obtained of 1.00, so the validity of this instrument was considered very good (Lawshe, 1975;Polit & Beck, 2006).Concurrent validation scores in this study indicate that HSC and CDI have a moderate correlation; this result support the notion that individuals with depression symptoms are more likely to have thoughts of worthlessness and thus exhibit high levels of hopelessness.In the academic content, hopelessness can explain that students' perception of receiving negative feedback and difficulties in participating in learning activities will teach them to hopelessness.(Au et al., 2009;Dhillon & Mehra, 2018;Lester, 2015).
The adaptation of HCS carried out in this study obtained satisfactory results.This satisfying psychometric trait is because the HCS adaptation process is carried out by the guideline phase of the ITC (Bartram et al., 2018) for test adaptation carried out by expert translators who are proficient in two languages, namely English and Indonesian, therefore the translation results are following the state of adolescents in Indonesia without changing the original content of the HCS.In addition, the involvement of expert reviews that fully understand the developmental conditions of adolescents in Indonesia also influences the success of HCS adaptation in Indonesia.
This study is the first investigating the validity of the Hopelessness Scale for Children, in Indonesian adolescents.Several limitations have to be mentioned.First, this study was not designed to investigate gender differences in the HSC score, although it could be a topic of great interest in future studies.Second, the samples were recruited from a limited region.Therefore, the results may not be representative of all high school students.

Conclusion
The Indonesian version of HSC can be used to measure hopelessness in adolescents.
Stage (2), Test development, in this second stage, five processes are carried out, including i) forward translation; ii) backward translation, two translators perform the forward-backward translation stage, each for forwarding translation and backward translation.In the forward translation, the translator has been . To examine the internal consistency of the Bahasa version of CHS, a reliability test using Cronbach's Alpha the acceptable values >0 .60 (Hair JF, William CB, Barry JB, 2010).Concurrent validity is analyzed by correlating HCS with CDI. the HSC-Indonesian version and CVI calculation can be found in Appendix 3.

Table 1
Descriptive Statistics of Hopelessness Children Scale Items

of Educational, Health and Community Psychology Vol 11, No 4, 2022 E-ISSN 2460-8467
English and Bahasa versions of the Hopelessness Scale for Children