Objective.

To obtain and analyze the structure and internal coherence of an initial proposal of the despair scale for older adults in northeast Coahuila, Mexico.

Method.

The study sample consisted of 106 adults over 60 years old; 57.5% were women and 42.5% were men. The sampling strategy was incidental. Hopelessness was measured through an instrument of 20 reagents expressly for the elderly population.

Results.

With the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, a two-component solution was obtained: motivation and sense of life and catastrophizing of the present and the future, explained 48.8% of the variance. Further, this new instrument showed an appropriate convergence validity as it showed a positive correlation, that goes from medium to high, with the Beck Hopelessness Scale (EDB), and the CESD-20 Depression Scale. The reliability was 0.91.

Conclusion.

The reliability of the scale proposed in this first version presented adequate values that reflect internal consistency and a coherent structure, similar what was reported in other studies with other tools.

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