Preliminary Questionnaire About Offenders Hope Scale And Application

Hope is an important part of positive psychology, and offenders are a very specialcoherent, the studies before always begin with a problem point of view. Research from theperspective of hope, on the one hand, can better understand prisoners from the angle ofpositive psychology, and on the other hand there are conductions to better education andreform of prisoners.Based on the results of open questionnaire，and the interviews, a preliminary scale wasdeveloped. With the scale,244inmates were surveyed. The preliminary scale was modifiedto form the formal scale by the analysis of exploratory factors. After this, with offenderhope scale,646inmates were surveyed. The obtained data were made validity andconfirmatory factor analysis, and the analysis of the hope of offenders’ characteristics fromthe demographic.On the condition of our investigation, we obtain the following conclusions:(1) The study accomplished the construction of offender hope scale based on theoffenders’ hope model. The offender hope scale consists three factors: hope of the time outof prison, hope before out of prison and hope after out of prison. The internal consistencycoefficient of the scale is between0.643and0.840and the half reliability coefficient isbetween0.594and0.778. there are also good content validity and concept validity，thecorrelation coefficient with each factor is between0.335and0.440，the correlationcoefficient with each factor and the total score is between0.719and0.799，which showed ahigh concept validity. So, the offender hope scale is a credible and effective scale with goodreliability and validity.(2) The average score of hope scale of inmates is3.59, the highest is hope of the timeout of prison, the second one is hope after out of prison and the lowest is hope before out ofprison. The total score of hope scale, hope of the time out of prison and hope after out ofprison, the inmates whose parents are both alive are significantly higher than those onlyfather or mother are alive. For the hope before out of prison, inmates who were sentenced less than5years is significantly higher than those sentenced10-25years、life sentence anddeath with reprieve. The years in prison is significantly negative correlated with hope.(3) The interpersonal trust of inmates is under medium level, male is significantlyhigher than female, the inmates who were sentenced5-10years is significantly higher thanthose sentenced less then5years, life sentence and death with reprieve.(4) The total score and each factor of hope scale of inmates is significantly negativecorrelated with interpersonal trust.(5) The total score and each factor of hope scale of inmates is significantly positivecorrelated with positive emotion and significantly negative correlated with negativeemotion.(6) The interpersonal trust of inmates is significantly positive correlated with positiveemotion and significantly negative correlated with negative emotion.