Towards a new conceptualization of hope in Italy: cultural adaptation and validation of the Perceived Hope Scale (PHS) and its implications for young adults’ mental health

Abstract Hope has long been a focus of psychological research due to its impact on well-being and mental health, particularly during key life stages such as young adulthood. Various conceptualizations have led to the development of multiple measurement tools. The Perceived Hope Scale (PHS) is a recently developed six-item instrument that, aligning with systemic and transdisciplinary perspectives, assesses perceived hope through items that are direct, context-independent, and theoretically neutral. This paper presents the cultural adaptation and Italian validation of the PHS using two distinct samples of young adults aged 18 to 30. Study I, conducted with a sample of 200 participants (M = 22.50, SD = 2.62), preliminarily explored the latent structure of the PHS through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and assessed some of its psychometric properties. Additionally, an independent sample of 405 young adults (M = 22.40, SD = 2.51) was recruited for Study II, which presents the results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses. Consistent with the original version of the instrument, findings support a single factor model with good fit indices. Specifically, the study examines the measurement invariance of the PHS across gender, religious beliefs, and subclinical and clinical generalized anxiety groups, as well as the scale’s internal consistency, IRT-based reliability, and its convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. In addition to confirming the robustness of the PHS, our results highlight the protective role of perceived hope in young adults’ mental health, paving the way for new research directions and intervention trajectories.