Responds to an article questioning the construct validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale. Suggests that social desirability should not be invoked as a potential confound unless the obtained covariation is theoretically inconsistent or is so overlapping as to make the respective scales redundant with respect to factorial content. (Author/RC)

States that the correlation between social desirability (SD) and hopelessness is open to several interpretations, but, in the absence of further data, concern for false-negative rates dictates caution in interpreting hopelessness scores when assessing suicidal behavior. Presents data on the relationship of SD, hopelessness, and prediction of…