Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Hope in Medicine Scale

Abstract Background: Hope is an integral part of seeking medical treatment. However, there is a lack of measurements that allow to examine the influence of hope on treatment success and the course of symptoms. Therefore, the present study aimed to fill this gap by developing a new self-report scale, the Hope in Medicine (HIM) scale, considering hope as multi-dimensional construct. Methods: We examined the psychometric properties of the HIM scale in a sample of 74 allergic rhinitis patients participating in a 2-week randomized-controlled trial comparing open-label placebos (OLP) with treatment as usual (TAU). Results: The 15-item HIM scale had a Cronbach’s α of .78 and an exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors: realistic hope (i.e., hoping for specific positive outcomes such as improvement in symptoms), transcendent hope (i.e., non-directed hoping that things will turn out positively), utopian hope (i.e., hoping to contribute to greater knowledge), and technoscience hope (i.e., hoping for scientific breakthrough). Speaking to the convergent validity of the scale, hope was moderately related to treatment expectancies (r = .56) and trait optimism (r = .34). We found that high hopes were related to less symptom improvement in TAU. Conclusions: The HIM scale showed good internal consistency and convergent validity; hence, the HIM scale might be a promising approach to investigate hope in relation to treatment success and symptom course more deeply in future studies. The negative association between hope and symptom improvement raises questions about possible downsides of hope in that context.