Hope is a core construct of positive psychology that has received only minimal application to work and vocational situations. C. R. Snyder (2000) conceptualized hope as a cognitive process with 3 primary components: goals, agency, and pathways. This article presents the development and validation of the Work Hope Scale (WHS), which was rationally based in Snyder's hope theory and designed to assess the presence of work hope in diverse populations. The 3 studies (N = 79, N = 224, and N = 31) presented here provide evidence of both convergent and discriminant validity for the WHS, establish the stability of the WHS, and demonstrate the criterion validity of the WHS by its ability to distinguish among groups that can be expected to have more or less hope about their work situations on the basis of their access to economic resources. The results, based on a diverse sample that includes welfare recipients, economically disadvantaged youth, college students, and community members, support the usefulness of the WHS for both research and interventions in vocational psychology.
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