Validation of the French translation of the Herth Hope Index assessment (HHI-F)

Abstract Objective This article presents the french validation of a hope assessment scale for use in an international study on the mental health of Swiss and Portuguese students during a pandemic (Querido et al., 2021). is The original hope assessment scale is the Herth Hope Index (HHI) (Herth, 1991) which measures different dimensions of hope and assesses the state of motivation to overcome situations with strong stressful or life-threatening components. Methods Our methodology is divided into two main steps. The first step aims at evaluating the qualitative aspects of the assessment tool. We will use a literal translation and a cultural adaptation through cross-cultural validation. We will start with a back-translation method for the translation and preparation of a draft version. Then, we will evaluate the draft by selecting a committee of experts and a sample of "end-users" to correct the initial translation and produce a consensus version. The second part will concern the evaluation of the psychometric and metrological qualities of the instrument. We will set up a method of parallel/equivalent form reliability and tests of convergent/divergent validity with other tools assessing similar constructs. Results We obtained a consensus from our expert panel (n=7) after our back-translation. We then tested the translation on a pilot group of students (n=13) in order to highlight potential comprehension problems. We obtained CVIs >.80 for all of our items in the second test run, which indicates that the translation is understood and accepted by the subjects. We also measured the concurrent validity between the HHI-F (target instrument) and other scales (criterion instruments) measuring the same phenomena, which were administered simultaneously to our subjects (i.e. DASS-21, IES-R and BRCS). The results suggest good translation validity of the HHI-F: systematically negative correlations between the HHI-F and the DASS-21 (r= -.562; p=000); all correlations between the IES-R and the HHI-F are negative 
(r= -.301; p=000) and all correlations between the HHI-F scale and the BRCS are positive (r= .552; p=000). Discussion The french version of the Herth Hope Index (HHI) is translated. Validation of the qualitative and quantitative criteria was carried out and the results show that the French version (HHI-F) has sufficiently strong fidelity and validity criteria to be used in practice.