title: Hopelessness in adolescents.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The hopelessness scales devised by Beck and by Kazdin have been used in hundreds of studies of both non-clinical and clinical samples. The present study identified non-clinical adolescent samples to see if the mean scores differed by age, sex, year of publication of the study, and nation.
  
  
  METHODS
  Studies of school students administered the Beck Hopelessness Scale or the Kazdin Hopelessness Scale for Children were identified from a literature search using PsycINFO and the search term "hopelessness" anywhere in the text. Seventy-eight studies were found reporting mean scores, 44 for American students and 34 for students in other countries.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The scores of American students were significantly lower than those of students in other countries, and there was a tendency for boys to have higher scores than girls (in 18 of the 27 studies which reported differences by sex). There was no tendency for the hopelessness scores of American students to have increased in recent years.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  American adolescents appear to be less hopeless than adolescent in other nations, and the scores of American adolescents do not seem to have changed significantly over the last 30 years.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Program The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 101 Vera King Farris Drive Galloway, NJ 08205-9441, USA. Electronic address: lesterd@stockton.edu.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lester
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology
keywords: Adolescents; Cross-national studies; Hopelessness