Initial Validity Evidence for the HOPE Scale : New Instrumentation to Identify Low - Income Elementary Students for Gifted Programs

144 Words) Students with exceptional academic potential who come from low-income families are frequently not identified for and consequently are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Because of this, new means of identifying such children must be developed. This paper presents the findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted on the HOPE Scale, a 13-item teacher-rating instrument designed to identify academic and social components of giftedness in elementary-aged students. Participants included 349 teachers who completed HOPE Scales on 5995 ethnically and economically diverse students from three rural and two metropolitan school districts in the Midwest. MCFA was also used to evaluate measurement invariance between income groups. Findings suggest a two-factor model represents good fit for the data while remaining loyal to the latent constructs of academic and social giftedness. Invariance test results suggested equivalence of model form, factor loading, and factor variances across income groups.