The effect of hopelessness on students engaged in pattern misbehavior: a replication

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to see whether high school students who have a pattern of misbehaving show higher levels of hopelessness than students who are largely well-behaved, using the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) as a measurement of hopelessness. This study is a replication of a study done by former University of Wisconsin-Stout student, Dean O. Hintz (1997). It was his contention that professionals in education need to do a more extensive job of diagnosing causes of student misbehavior. He stated that by recognizing that hopelessness is a contributor to misbehavior, educational personnel could effectively show students how to change their self-perceptions and how they view the future. This would be an important step toward addressing the core of the problem (Hintz, 1997). The results of his study conducted in a small town in southern Minnesota indicated that those students who engaged in patterned misbehavior showed elevated scores of hopelessness. The study was replicated in the island of New Providence (N.P.), in the Bahamas, to see if this pattern would occur in a different cultural setting. Two groups of students with varying levels of behavior problems at a public high school in N.P. were identified. The BHS was administered to both groups. The BHS was scored by summing the keyed responses of hopelessness for each of the 20 items. Scoring was facilitated by use of the BHS scoring key (Beck & Steer, 1993). Analysis of the data was conducted through obtaining frequency counts, percentages and an independent groups T-test. The results varied, but overall, students who were identified with behavior problems were not more hopeless than students who were not identified with behavior problems. In the discussion section, the researcher offers possible explanations for why the results occurred by delineating certain developmental, cultural and economic factors which may have contributed. Recommendations for any future study are identified.