Hope and General Self-efficacy: Two Measures of the Same Construct?

The aim of this study was to test the extent to which hope measure is equivalent to general self-efficacy measure. Questionnaire data on these two constructs and other external variables were collected from 199 Chinese college students. The factor analytic results suggested that hope and self-efficacy items measured the same construct. The unidimensional model combining hope items and GSE items fit the data as well as the bidimensional model, indicating that their corresponding items measured the same underlying construct. Further analyses showed that hope and GSE did not correlate with external variables differently in a systematic manner. Most of these correlational differences were non-significant and negligible. These findings suggested that the literatures studying GSE and hope could be considered to be integrated and that researchers need to recognize and acknowledge the conceptual and operational similarities among these constructs in the literature.